


Roses Are Red

by Libbeerty



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anal Sex, Blow Jobs, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Hand Jobs, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Child Abuse, Slow Burn, Soulmates, still zombies though
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-06-23
Packaged: 2019-04-30 12:11:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 51,676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14496705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Libbeerty/pseuds/Libbeerty
Summary: The obligatory 'soulmates see color when they meet' AU. Except Daryl doesn't believe in soulmates and Rick isn't gay.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to a new story. This one, unlike the other one I'm steadily uploading right now, isn't finished. I'll be posting as I finish chapters, so expect one every day or two. This is the AU nobody asked for and everyone else has probably already done. I hope I can do it justice regardless.

Chapter 1  
The Walker in front of him can't be any older than eight, with long, light hair and half of her mouth ripped away. She's shuffling forward slowly on her slipper-covered feet, with what's probably blood dripping from between her teeth. Rick knows blood is supposed to be red, but all he sees is dark grey liquid pooling in the corners of the girl's mouth.

  
He holds up his gun, surprised by how steady his hand is, and shoots her before she can get too close. Right in the forehead, a perfect shot, and he'd be proud of himself if his stomach wasn't so knotted up. He always was one of the best shots in the academy, next to Shane, of course.

  
He gets closer, holding his gun out just in case, and looks down at the girl's body. There's grey blood oozing out of the wound in her forehead, flecks of the same color in her hair, and her eyes are still open, irises a light color that's almost white. He wonders what color her eyes were before. He imagines they were blue, because of her light hair color, but he'll never know for certain. When they die, their eyes always turn white.

  
He holsters his gun, taking a deep, shuddering breath and picking up his gas can from the ground. He has a wife, waiting for him out there somewhere, and a kid. A son, eleven years old, twelve in three months. He doesn't know what color their eyes are, either, because Lori isn't his soulmate.

  
Somewhere along the line, he stopped caring about soulmates. Sure, he'd love to see color, would love to know what his family really looks like underneath all the grey, but he loves his wife more.

  
Rick Grimes is fine with the world being grey, because he's in love and he's happy. Maybe not as happy as he would be with his _soulmate_ , but he doubts he'll ever find her. He hopes he doesn't, because he wants to be with Lori and Carl. He doesn't want to abandon them the second he sees color.

  
There's a big sign on a post in front of the gas station that reads No Gas in dark, inky black letters. Rick reads it twice, then curses and heads back to his car. He has enough gas to last another thirty miles, maybe less. He just has to hope he'll pass another gas station on his way to Atlanta.

  
He stows the gas can in the trunk of the car. The can is a murky sort of grey that means it could be any color between white and black. He's heard of the different colors, even met a few people who have explained things to him like that bananas are yellow and stop signs are red. But he still can't picture them as anything but grey.

  
He finds a horse in an abandoned building off of the highway. It's not really abandoned - there are people inside, but they've been dead for a long time. Probably since the beginning of the outbreak, but he's not sure how long it's been. He might have been in a coma for weeks, maybe even months, after the dead started walking. Morgan didn't explain much to him except that they're called 'Walkers' and that headshots are the only thing that kills them. Apparently, the family inside of the house knew that too, because each of them bears the same bullet hole buried deep into their skulls.

  
There's blood on the walls. At least, Rick thinks it's blood. It's grey and splattered over everything, and painted on the walls to read God Forgive Us. The stench of rotting meat fills Rick's nostrils and he retches but doesn't throw up. He's seen death plenty of times as a cop, but never like this. There are flies buzzing everywhere and Rick doesn't dare touch anything. So he just searches for car keys he doesn't find and leaves the house when he realizes that horses can be ridden.

  
He rides the horse to Atlanta, even though the poor animal is probably tired and hungry and hasn't been taken care of in weeks. It's a bumpy ride, and he's a little unsteady without a saddle. He remembers the time his father took him horseback riding when he was ten. He nearly fell off of a horse that his father told him was a deep, chestnut brown color with tan spots on its back. He pictures all horses to be brown, even though he knows they come in all sorts of colors. The one he's riding is a dull grey, like its coat hasn't been brushed in a long time, and it whinnies when he sticks his heel into its side to make it go faster.

  
Atlanta looks different than he remembers it. A few of the buildings are collapsed onto themselves, rubble lining the streets, and cars are parked haphazardly all over the sidewalks. The street lights are out, some of them with broken bulbs, and he spots two double-decker buses on the side of the street with a couple of dead bodies in each. They stir as he passes, so he picks up the pace.

  
He's overrun just minutes after entering the city. He nears an intersection and at least three dozen Walkers approach him from all sides. They aren't slow-moving like the little girl he encountered at the gas station; these are hungry, desperate creatures who probably haven't eaten in days. They swarm him in groups and he tries to back up, urges the horse to go faster, but the monsters are too fast, too clustered together, and they pin the horse to the ground in seconds. Rick falls onto the concrete, landing on his side, dropping his bag of guns and ammunition on his way down. His head is ringing and it takes him a second too long to react. He barely manages to pull himself underneath a nearby military tank before the monsters are on him, reaching their fingers out to him on all sides of the machine.

  
His hands are shaking as he pulls his body up into the tank, his mind racing. He looks at his trembling fingers; there's dirt underneath his nails, or maybe it's blood. It's dark grey and he picks at it, looking around for a way out. There's a doorway above and below him, but they're both swarmed by Walkers. There's a Walker inside of the tank, too, and when it wakes he shoots it in the head, his ears ringing with echoes of the bullet on the inside walls of the vehicle. He pockets a grenade and a second gun from the body and looks around, but all he can see is dark grey walls and even darker grey steel plating.

  
His clothes are soaked through with sweat, sticking to his wet skin uncomfortably. One of the members of his squad told him once that their uniforms are tan, which is a sort of light brown mixed with yellow that Rick can't imagine. He has enough trouble trying to think of colors on their own, but mixing them is something else entirely. He wonders how many different colors there are, how many things he's been missing out on in his lifetime. He wishes he could see Lori's pretty eyes in full color, run his hand through hair he knows is brown and give her flowers in all colors of the rainbow. But she isn't his soulmate.

  
"Hey, dumbass. You cozy in there?"

  
\---

  
The journey out of Atlanta is stressful, dangerous, and downright terrifying. He meets a man named Glenn, who helps him out of the tank and up a ladder on the side a building, through the back of a department store, and into a storage room where he introduces Rick to the rest of his group. They all seem like decent people. Cautious, but decent.

  
Andrea is the first to label him a danger, aiming her gun at him with the safety on as if she'd dare shoot him when he knows she won't. Her hair is fine and light, he figures it must be blonde, and tied back in a low ponytail. She looks on the verge of tears, swinging her gun in near hysterics. Rick feels a pang of guilt; he really hadn't been thinking clearly when he'd wasted so many bullets and all but drawn the Walkers right to their front door. He had just been trying to escape.

  
T-Dog seems more sympathetic. Rick can tell his skin is dark - brown, his father told him, is one of two main skin types. There are a bunch of in-between tones, but all Rick sees is shades of darkness. Dark grey skin and light grey skin. T-Dog's is darker, but not the darkest he's seen, and he doesn't have any hair. Jacqui is also darker-skinned, a shade darker than T-Dog, Rick thinks, with black hair and nice clothes. She's wearing sparkly earrings that look silver in the low lighting.

  
Morales is the last of the group, and Rick figures that's his last name but doesn't think to ask his first. He's one of the in-between colors, his hair dark and his chin covered in stubble. And then there's Merle.  
Merle Dixon is the first enemy Rick has made in Atlanta, the first in a long time since he became a police officer. He's typical trailer-trash, waving his gun around shouting obscenities at the women and men alike. Rick dislikes him instantly, but it's only once he's handcuffed his wrist to a pipe that he fully understands the gravity of the situation.

  
The Walkers clogging up the inner doorways of the department store have pale grey skin, peppered with wounds - some dark and bleeding, others older, deeper, obviously the cause of their deaths. But they all have the same dull, white eyes. No matter what they looked like before, they all share that same trait now.

  
Morgan Jones, who saved him after he left the hospital when he woke from his coma, told him about his wife. She was his soulmate, a lovely woman a couple of years younger than him with large brown eyes and the prettiest smile. Morgan told Rick about seeing in color for the first time, noticing the trees with their bright green leaves, the baby-blue sky and the yellow-white sun. Seeing his wife wearing red flowers on her dress. Kissing her cherry-red lips. It had been perfect, he told Rick. The world was so much prettier in color, like everything had finally sprung to life after a long hibernation. And then his wife died, and the world went back to grey.

  
Morales is married, Rick learns, to a young woman who isn't his soulmate. They have two children together, a boy and a girl, and Morales's wife had a soulmate once. They met when they were just kids, and they married as soon as both of them turned eighteen. Morales doesn't tell Rick what happened to the man who was his wife's true love, but it doesn't matter. He's gone, and the two of them are happy. Like Rick and Lori. Rick wouldn't mind if he never met his soulmate, because Lori and Carl make his life worth living.

  
Glenn tells Rick about a camp their group has, set up a couple of hours outside of Atlanta. There are more people there, all kinds of people, and Rick's heart stutters in his chest. Maybe someone he knows is there. Maybe somebody else made it out. Maybe Lori, or Carl, or Shane...

  
But he doesn't ask. Because he doesn't want to know the answer, not really.

  
Morales tells him on the way out of the city, back to camp, about a man named Daryl. Daryl Dixon, Merle's younger brother. He doesn't say much, just that Daryl won't be happy when he finds out that Merle is still handcuffed to the roof of the department store, his wrist bound to the pipe by a chain Rick knows he can't break. Rick shudders, feeling bone-deep guilt. Nobody deserves to die like that, not even Merle Dixon. He's going to have to find a way to make it right.

  
When they pull up into the edge of the camp, Rick is nervous. Not about meeting new people, but about looking at the group for familiar faces and being disappointed again. He can't stay here, not if Lori and Carl are still out there somewhere waiting for him. They could be starving, scared and alone, they could be dying in the middle of the woods and he wouldn't know the first place to look for them. It takes him several minutes to leave the van, stepping slowly along the rocky trail, and he only looks up once he's past the line of cars.

  
And he sees them. _Oh, God_ , he sees them. Lori, Carl, and Shane, all alive, all waiting there for him. And suddenly it doesn't matter at all that she's not his soulmate, he's never been more happy to see her in his life, her grey hair and grey eyes and grey clothing. She's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, and he thinks that if she was in color, she might be too beautiful for him to handle anyway.

  
He holds on tightly to them both, to his wife and son, until his arms start to ache. Shane nods at him from across the camp, smiling with dirty teeth and messy hair, and Rick pulls him in for a sideways hug after he finally lets go of his family. Shane is warm and rough and he kept them _safe_. Rick knows he can never repay him for that.

  
\---

  
It's a full day later when it happens. They hear a scream from inside of the woods, and Rick is on his feet even before he recognizes the voice.

  
Carl and Sophia run towards them, both unharmed, and Rick leads half of the group through the tangled tree roots and crunchy fallen leaves into a clearing, where there's a single Walker chewing hungrily on a half-eaten deer carcass. There's dark blood and viscera on the forest floor, but the monster doesn't hear them until they're close enough to touch. It leaps blindly at them, mouth open wide and hands clawing in the air. Rick looks between the dead deer and the walking corpse for a moment, terror in the pit of his stomach, before he swings out blindly, hitting it in the back of the head with the shovel he took with him on his way out of camp. The others do the same, brandishing their own weapons, until the Walker is twitching on the ground, limbs severed and head lolling. It's the most grotesque thing Rick has ever seen, and he has to hold still and focus his eyes on a nearby tree branch to keep from throwing up.

  
Rick feels dizzy, trying not to look at the gore laid out on the grass floor by his feet. He's seen a lot in his years as a cop, and bloody murders are something he's almost gotten used to. But a twice dead body, strewn out in pieces, makes his stomach churn and his head spin. The others don't look much better, and he swears he can see Amy retching out of the corner of his eye.

  
Something rustles in the trees, moving dark leaves around them, and at first Rick thinks it's another Walker. He holds up his makeshift weapon, trying to quell the nausea in his gut, but all that comes out of the forest on the other end of the clearing is a man. A slightly rumpled, grumpy-looking man with light brown hair and stormy blue eyes.

  
The world bursts into full color.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

It's incredibly disorienting at first.

  
Colors swarm his vision, some he can name, others he has no words for. The leaves on the trees are the color _green_ , which means that the grass on the ground must be, too. The sky is light blue and flecked with white clouds, and the stranger from the woods has the same color eyes, but a little darker. _Brown_ is a prominent color - the tree branches, the dry dirt, the stranger's light, short hair. Rick blinks, and the colors appear underneath his eyelids, flickering like lights as he tries to take them all in. He feels dizzy, and one look at the stranger, who's wearing ripped clothing in colors Rick doesn't know with a string of squirrels on one shoulder and a crossbow slung on the other, tells him that he's feeling the same way.

  
Wide blue eyes stare back at him, mouth slightly open, but he doesn't look around like Rick does. He just focuses on Rick, staring at him until the officer starts to feel uncomfortable. Rick tries to remember the names of the colors his father taught him, but his mind is blank. His heart beats so loudly in his ears that he's afraid everyone else can hear it too, and it feels like it's been hours, but really just a few seconds have passed. Nobody else seems to notice anything strange, because they keep their weapons trained on the downed Walker and only look up once the stranger is out of the woods and in the clearing, crossbow aimed deftly at the Walker's head.

  
He doesn't seem disoriented. He's scowling, blue eyes narrowed, and he shoots the animated Walker head like it's nothing. He mutters something to the rest of the group that Rick can't hear over his pounding heart before he walks off, swinging his bow around like a sword.

  
Rick stares after him, colors blurring around in the corners of his vision. His soulmate. His soulmate. Only once the stranger's back is turned does Rick realize that not only has he finally found his soulmate, but it's a man.

  
T-Dog leans over and whispers, "That's Daryl Dixon. Merle's brother," into his ear, close enough that Rick can make sense of the words over his own hammering heart.

  
Daryl is attractive, objectively speaking, and if Rick was into guys he might actually give him a chance. But Rick isn't gay, and he loves Lori, and having a soulmate doesn't change that. Especially when Daryl turns around at the edge of the clearing and frowns back at him, looking even grumpier than before, like he can't possibly imagine that Rick Grimes is his soulmate. Rick feels a swirl of angry heat in his stomach and he thinks, of all people, why did it have to be Merle Dixon's brother?

  
He follows the rest of the group back into camp, where Daryl is looking around shouting for his brother. Guilt replaces the anger in his stomach and Rick stops at the edge of the fire ring, toeing at the dry dirt with his shoe. The others who followed him into the woods disperse, T-Dog hanging back close to Rick and Shane watching them from beside the RV. Daryl looks around wildly, swinging his string of squirrels around his neck, before his eyes land on Rick and he actually grimaces.

  
"Who the hell are you?" he spits at Rick, taking a large step towards him. Shane lifts his hands like he's ready to grab him, even though he's a good ten feet away, but Rick shakes his head almost imperceptibly in his direction.

  
"Rick Grimes," he says, trying to keep his voice steady. The bright blue sky overhead is filled with clouds now, looking like it's going to rain soon. Behind Daryl, Rick sees the line of tents - one of which he slept in with Lori and Carl just last night - one blue, one green, and the rest in colors he has no name for. They're pretty, much more welcoming-looking in full color, but so is the rest of the camp. It's like reading a book and trying to imagine everything, and then finally seeing it on television or on the big screen. "I'm sorry about your brother."

  
Daryl drops his string of dead animals and sizes Rick up, standing at his full height even though he's still a good couple of inches shorter than Rick. His shirt looks kind of like a mixture of green and brown. Is there a word for that?

  
"What the fuck did you just say?" Daryl all but shouts, right in Rick's face. "What d'you know about Merle?"

  
The animosity between them is almost palpable. Rick can feel heat flowing in the space between their chests, feel Daryl's hot breath on his face. His throat tightens painfully.

  
"Merle," he begins, trying to get his voice to work without cracking, "was a danger to the group. I handcuffed him to a roof in Atlanta and we left before I could unlock the cuffs. He's still there. I'm sorry."

  
He's only a little sorry. He's not sorry for what he did to Merle, because the asshole deserved it, but he's sorry for how it's affecting Daryl. First time meeting his soulmate, and he's already fucking it up.

  
Heat rises in Daryl's face, painting his cheeks a bright color Rick doesn't know the word for, but it's very pretty. He clenches his hands into fists and narrows his shiny blue eyes, and for a moment Rick is enamored by the colors all over his face. He barely even registers the curses being thrown at him, until they turn into punches and he just barely manages to duck in time to avoid a hit to the jaw.

  
He falls to the ground, throwing his hands up to defend himself, and he almost forgets everything he learned at the police academy. Daryl crouches down next to his head, grabbing at his neck, and Rick throws him off and rolls back onto his feet, stumbling a bit. Everything is a little blurry around the edges, the colors flowing together like oil paint in the background, and it's hard for Rick to focus on any one particular thing. The knife Daryl pulls out of his belt is a color Rick actually recognizes - silver, with a black handle; it brushes against the front of his shirt and tears the fabric as he moves back, ducking underneath a high swing and only stopping when Shane comes up from behind and puts Daryl in a chokehold.

  
Daryl sputters through his crushed throat, fighting with the arms wrapped tightly around his neck and kicking out wildly with his legs. He shouts all kinds of obscenities as he struggles. Rick waits until he's a little calmer, hands still clawing at Shane's arms but feet perfectly still on the ground, before he leans down just a few inches from the brunet's parted lips. His breath is warm on Rick's cheek. 

 

"Can we have a calm, rational discussion about this, please?"

  
Daryl grunts and nods, as well as he can with his head locked in position. Shane releases him but doesn't move away, keeping one hand curled around the back of Daryl's collar as he hauls him to his feet.

  
"Thank you," Rick says, not missing the glowering coming from the brunet's eyes. "Your brother is still up there, on that roof. That's on me. I'll take a car, go back, it'll only take me a day or-"

  
"I'll go, too," T-Dog volunteers before Rick can finish. "I dropped the key. That's my fault."

  
Rick nods and shoots a pointed look at Glenn, who's standing by the shiny sports car he drove back to the camp in. An old man named Dale is stripping it down for parts, while Glenn looks on with a mournful expression. It takes him a few seconds to notice Rick is staring at him, expecting an answer to a question he hasn't even asked.

  
Glenn sighs, twisting his hat around on his head. "Aw, man. Do I have to?"

  
"You know the city more than any of us. In and out, right?"

  
Rick looks around at the rest of the group, waiting to see if anyone else is willing to go, when he sees her. Lori. She's standing by the RV, arms crossed, hair falling loosely over her shoulders. And she's _beautiful_.

  
She's got pretty brown eyes and black hair, wearing a bright blue tank top and dangling earrings that match. Her skin is light, but not white, less like the color of the clouds and more like the lightest bark in between knots on tree trunks. She's staring at him, fingers tapping out a beat on her opposite bicep, and it takes him a full minute to realize that everyone else is watching his reaction. He shakes his head, runs a hand through his messy curls, and forces himself to look away from his wife, who looks more stunning right now than she has since they were married.

  
\---

  
Merle isn't there when they reach the roof. They find his severed hand and a rusty old saw, both covered in blood. It's a stark contrast to the light skin of his hand, much more than grey-on-grey, and it churns Rick's stomach. He's not sure he would have wanted to be a cop if the world looked like this.

  
The trip isn't for nothing, though. They find Rick's abandoned bag of guns, and Rick gets a moment alone on the roof to talk to Daryl, after T-Dog and Glenn have gone back downstairs to check for Walkers. Daryl doesn't look too thrilled about that.

  
"We need to talk about this," Rick says, after the door slams shut behind T-Dog and Daryl finally throws Merle's hand - wrapped in a blood-soaked handkerchief - into his backpack. Rick gestures between the two of them from ten feet away.

  
"Nothin' to talk about." Daryl shrugs, picking up the bloody hand-saw and contemplating it for a moment before throwing it back to the ground.

  
Rick takes a single step closer. Daryl eyes him like he's waiting for a punch. "You're seeing color now, right? Isn't it amazing?"

  
Daryl looks down at the tiled roof, scuffing his foot. "It ain't nothing. Bullshit. Liked it better before."

  
His tone is venomous. Rick suddenly wishes they weren't alone anymore.

  
"Listen," he says, massaging his temple. His head aches. "I don't like it any more than you do, I'm sure. I'm married, I'm not even gay! But it's gotta mean something, right? We're soulma-"

  
"Lemme stop you right there, Grimes." Daryl rolls his shoulders back, making his backpack swing. "We ain't _nothing_. It's all _bullshit_. Colors don't mean anythin'. My brother cut off his own hand 'cause of you. We ain't square, not by a long shot."

  
"What color are my eyes?" Rick says suddenly, interrupting his tirade. Daryl looks like he's about to explode, and Rick would rather not be up on a roof with him when he does.

  
Daryl looks confused for a moment, then shakes his head slowly.

  
"What color? C'mon, at least give me that." Rick fiddles with the hem of his shirt, taking another step forward. The distance between them is halved now, but the tension feels twice as thick. "My wife can't tell me. I think my old man told me once, but I can't remember. I'm curious."

  
Daryl looks defensive, hands on the straps of his backpack. Rick thinks he isn't going to answer, but then his index finger goes up, pointing straight at the sky. Blue. Rick smiles.

  
"Thank you."

  
\---

  
Daryl leaves the group as soon as they pull up into the rocky edge of camp, jumping out of the car before it's even fully parked. Rick watches him swing his crossbow across his back and immediately head back into the woods, probably to hunt or maybe just to get away from the others. From Rick.

  
Rick doesn't mind, because he's gotten kind of fed up with Daryl giving him the stink eye every five minutes in the back of the truck. He wishes he could have driven, but Glenn knows the way a lot better than he does and T-Dog called shotgun before he had the chance. Maybe the universe is against him or something, saddling him with Daryl Dixon of all people.

  
Someone comes up behind him as he leaves the car, wrapping their arms around his shoulders and breathing into his ear. He smiles, putting one hand on Lori's forearm and inhaling the scent of washing powder and fruity cologne. He turns his head, seeing the chipping paint on her fingernails - it's light, almost white, but he can't name the color. He catches her lips and kisses her, drawing a huff of breath out of her nose. His hands go to her waist immediately, feeling the silky fabric of her top and the tight waistband of her shorts.

  
She's wearing white today, and for the first time, he can actually see the contrast between the color of her shorts and her skin. Instead of blending in, they stand out, making her look more three-dimensional than before. With her hair pulled back and her face flushed, she looks stunning. He smiles into the kiss and pulls her closer; he missed this so, so much.

  
"Missed you," he whispers against her mouth, pulling back to look into her shiny brown eyes. "Both of you. Knew I'd find you."

  
Something ghosts over her face, and expression Rick can't figure out before it's gone, but then she smiles back and kisses his forehead.

  
"Never doubted that," she says. Then she bites her lip, smile faltering just a bit. "Rick, I'm sorry we didn't wait for you. I thought you were _gone_ , they said they'd take you somewhere safe, another hospital, and then when I didn't hear from anybody, I just..."

  
"Hey, it's okay." He massages the small of her back with his open palm, rubbing circles in her skin. "You couldn't have known. I'm glad you got out safely. You and Carl and Shane. That's all that matters."

  
He doesn't tell her about Daryl, because how can he? She's his soulmate, screw the colors. She means more to him than Daryl ever will. He just can't tell her about the colors, not while she's still seeing grey. It wouldn't be fair.

  
It doesn't matter that Daryl is his soulmate. He's an asshole, just like his brother. And Rick has already found the love of his life.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick gets a little help with his colors, and has a little moment with Daryl over the color blue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was my favorite to write, so far. I love Rick and Carol's interactions. I hope you guys like it too :)

"Hmm... Here." She draws a line on the sheet of paper, nice and thick. It looks kind of like blood. "That's _red_. Like a stop sign, right? And an apple, and Glenn's hat."

  
Rick looks down at the mark, trying to commit it to memory. It's a rich, slightly dark color. It's almost the same shade as the car Glenn drove back from Atlanta a couple of days ago, and the shirt Jacqui is wearing today. He thinks it should be pretty easy to remember.

  
"Red," he repeats, glancing at Carol for approval. She nods. "Okay. What's next?"

  
Carol puts the red marker back into the box and picks out another color. Luckily Sophia is too busy playing with Carl to notice her drawing tools are missing.

  
Carol holds up another marker and takes the cap off, making another long mark on the white sheet of paper.

  
"That's green," Rick says, excited to know the answer before she can tell him. "Like leaves and grass. My dad told me about that one when I was little."

  
Carol cocks her head to the side, replacing the green marker back into the box. "What other colors do you know?"

  
Rick thinks for a moment, but he can only come up with two others. "Brown and blue. Brown because that's the color of trees, and blue because of the sky." _And Daryl's eyes_ , his mind unhelpfully supplies.

  
"Okay." Carol glances down at the sheet of paper, where there are currently four long lines down the middle. Yellow, orange, red, and green. "That's probably enough for one day, right? I don't think you'll remember very much if I try to teach you all of them at once."

  
"How many are there?"

  
She writes the names of the colors underneath their lines, folds up the piece of paper and hands it to him. He sticks it in his pocket, not wanting anyone else to see. "Infinitely many shades, I think. But there are seven colors in the rainbow. We're just missing purple and indigo."

  
She points at the two colors in the box of markers. Rick thinks _indigo_ looks an awful like dark blue, and can see how confusing it can be to learn them all.

  
He looks up, glancing around the campsite to make sure they aren't being watched. They aren't. Lori is in the woods picking mushrooms, Shane is with her making sure she gets back safe, and Carl is playing with Sophia by the water. Nobody else seems to notice or care that Rick and Carol are sitting by a tree underneath the clothesline with a box of markers between them.

  
Carol's husband, Ed, is her soulmate. Rick thinks that's kind of unfair, because he's seen how roughly Ed treats her and her daughter, but he supposes people can't choose who they're meant to be with. As far as Rick knows, Carol is the only other person in the camp who's found their soulmate, so she's the only one who can teach him the colors without the others finding out.

  
He fingers the piece of paper in his pocket, his heart hammering with excitement. He looks around, trying to put a name to as many colors as he can. A yellow tent. A red car. Brown logs in the fire pit. Carl's garish orange flip flops.

  
Carol sees his smile and mirrors it, looking just a little strained. "We can do this whenever you want. I haven't felt this helpful since Sophia's PTA meetings back in kindergarten."

  
"C'mon. You do laundry and cook for everyone. You're probably the most helpful person here."

  
A light, reddish blush creeps up her neck and she gives him a shy smile. Ed is passed out in a lawn chair by the fire pit; if he wasn't, Rick doesn't think Carol would dare be over here helping him. They're out of eyesight, though, just in case he wakes up.

  
Rick scrambles to his feet, patting the pocket with the colorful paper inside. "Thanks again, Carol. And for not telling anyone. I really appreciate it."

  
He holds out his hand and Carol hesitates for a moment before taking it and letting him help her to her feet. "It's no problem, really. I like feeling helpful." She looks across the campsite, at the line of tents and the others working on their daily chores. "You sure you won't tell me who it is? You know I can always guess."

  
Rick shrugs. "That's not important. Nothing's going to happen from it, so it doesn't matter. I just wanted to sort things out in my head a bit. Colors are... confusing."

  
"Tell me about it. I was seventeen, not even out of high school. I found a book of colors at the book store and hid it under my bed so my parents wouldn't find out."

  
Rick can't picture Carol doing something so rebellious, but he supposes that's exactly what they're doing, hiding under a tree to practice colors behind her husband's back. There really is more to Carol Peletier than just doing laundry and cooking meals.

  
"How long did that last?"

  
She chuckles under her breath. "About a week?"

  
"Great," Rick says, grinning. "At that rate, I've got, what? Five more days?"

  
\---

  
The fire is red, but it's also yellow. And orange. With a little white around the edges. And colors are by far the most confusing thing Rick has ever had to learn, including twelfth grade Maths.

  
Daryl brought back a deer around midday - brown with muddy black feet and eyes - and helped Carol butcher it for supper. Rick heard them talking, but there was no mention of soulmates or colors, so he let them be. Maybe having a common friend will help Daryl stop glaring at him from across the campsite.

  
It hasn't, though. Rick sits between Lori and Shane around the fire, chewing on a piece of overcooked meat and stirring the canned beans on his plate around with his fork. Daryl is sitting directly across from him, as far away as possible, and looks up every few minutes just to shoot him an icy glance. Carol nudges him once from his left, but other than that, nobody seems to notice. They're all too busy chatting and chewing, and as long as he keeps his head down, Rick can almost pretend Daryl isn't even there. The world looks kind of grey at night, anyway.

  
\---

  
The water is blue, with grey pebbles on the bottom and murky patches of seaweed floating up in some of the deepest parts that Rick thinks might be green, but some of them look kind of black, too. Not at all like grass, but the color might just be a darker shade. He wades into the water and grabs hold of a wispy patch of seaweed, studying it between his fingers. Out of the water, it looks kind of brown.

  
He looks around at the others, some sunbathing, a few swimming in the lake. Andrea and her little sister Amy are paddling a boat out into the water, fishing lines dipped down over the side. Carl is collecting rocks and shells with Sophia, his dark hair tousled by the breeze, under the watchful eye of Carol in her lawn chair by the water. She's washing clothes with an old-fashioned washboard, and Rick thinks he really should be doing something to help, but he hasn't showered since the sheriff's station with Morgan and Duane, and the cool water feels amazing underneath the blazing Georgia sun.

  
Rick swirls the water around with his hands, then ducks down and splashes some over his head, wetting his hair. Glenn and Dale are a few feet away, swimming in lazy circles, chatting about something a less mechanically-inclined person like Rick wouldn't understand. Rick's eyes scan the surface of the lake, taking in large grey rocks and colorful pebbles underfoot, foliage creeping up the sides of the quarry, and a lone swimmer, on the other end of the lake, wading into the water in a plain blue shirt and long pants despite it being a blisteringly hot day outside.

  
Daryl Dixon stops when the water is up to his waist and dips his hands into it, elbow-deep, splashing a little water on his face and under his arms. He looks like he's being careful not to get his shirt wet, and Rick wonders why he doesn't just take it off.

  
Rick, up to his neck in water, swims slowly towards the other man, kicking his feet under the calm water. He practices the colors he knows in his head on the way, thinking that maybe he can talk to the brunet about them. Red car, yellow tent, orange flip flops, green leaves, brown tree branches. Blue eyes. He can't find anything purple or indigo to name, and he sees a couple of other things around camp that he doesn't have a color for - Amy's shirt, the writing on the side of the boat, and the wriggly worms they're using for bait.

  
Daryl looks almost peaceful, swimming by himself, and Rick feels kind of guilty for interrupting him. But if they're going to be living together, in the same group of people, they're going to have to get along. He handcuffed Merle to a roof and left him there because he was refusing to do just that, and he's not afraid to repeat the process with his little brother. Though he doesn't have a second pair of handcuffs on him, and he'd rather not see a second Dixon cut off their own hand because of him.

  
"Hey," he says when he gets closer, just a few feet away from the brunet. Daryl jumps in the water, turning quickly and splashing the shiny blue liquid around his waist.

  
"What the hell, Grimes?" he hisses, all traces of peace gone from his expression.

  
Rick holds up his hand in surrender. "Sorry! Just thought we could talk. That okay?"

  
Daryl sneers, looking ready to bolt, but stays where he is. He crosses his arms at his chest, cold water sloshing around his hips. Rick suddenly feels very exposed, standing in waist-deep water without a shirt on, and he folds his arms across his chest as well, backing up a foot or so until the water swirls around his belly button.

  
"Talk about what?" Daryl asks, sounding defensive. Droplets of water gather on the fringe of his hair and roll down his face; he reaches up with one hand and wipes them away, patting the excess water out of his hair.

  
"Do you want me to teach you the colors?" Rick asks, figuring it's as safe a question as he can ask. "Carol's been teaching me, and-"

  
"No," Daryl interrupts. "No need. Don't matter if I know 'em or not."

  
Rick frowns, watching his posture carefully. He's drawn in on himself, arms still crossed, looking everywhere but at Rick. "It could help. To know what to call things. I don't know them all, but I know most of the important ones."

  
Daryl hesitates, glaring at a place behind Rick's right ear. "Like what?"

  
"Like..." Rick pauses, looking around. He holds out his hands and scoops some water between them, cupping it and holding it up for Daryl to see. "This is blue, right?" He lets it run down through his fingers into the space between them. "And that," he continues, pointing at Daryl's half-wet muscle shirt, "is also blue. But darker. There are _shades_ in between the colors. I haven't quite figured those out yet."

  
Daryl looks confused and a little bit angry, but he doesn't say anything, so Rick takes that as his cue to continue.

  
"The sky is blue, too. And my tent. And your eyes."

  
Daryl blinks, a few more drops of water trailing down the side of his face. He drops his hands, splashing water.

  
Rick waits for a response, but he doesn't get one. Instead, Daryl looks down at the water, running his fingers through it with a thoughtful look on his face. He's still frowning, but he doesn't look like he wants to hit Rick or curse him out or anything, so that's a good sign. Maybe.

  
Rick waits another minute before he turns away, swimming back in the direction he came from. Maybe he'll help Carol with the laundry, or Andrea and Amy with fishing; he used to fish with his father, how hard could it be? He's a few feet farther away when he hears it, almost like a whisper, like it isn't even meant for him to hear. But he does, and it brings a small smile to his face.

  
"Yours are blue, too."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick learns pink, Daryl discovers that his socks are red, and Ed is the worst kind of soulmate to have.

Purple. Rick looks down at the sheet of paper again, crinkling the edges with his fingers, and then looks up, glancing around for the new color. Nothing. He thinks at one point he sees something purple through the window of one of the cars, but on closer inspection it turns out to be a dark blue air freshener hanging from the inside mirror.

  
Indigo is even trickier, because he sees it _everywhere_ , but most of the time it's just blue playing tricks with his eyes. He sets the color aside for later, making a mental note to ask Carol more about it next time he sees her.

  
His newest color is pink. It's not part of the rainbow, but it's still a color, somehow. Rick isn't sure how that works, but he trusts Carol. She tells him that pink is a feminine color, it's what doctors who can see colors put newborn baby girls in at the hospital. He swears he's seen Dale wearing pink on more than one occasion, but he doesn't dare say anything.

  
Rick practices his colors wherever he goes, no matter what he's doing. When he folds laundry for Carol, he tries to name the colors of every shirt and pair of pants. Most of the jeans are blue, which is easy, but Lori's shorts are white and green and black. The shirts are harder, especially the ones with patterns and multiple colors in them. Jacqui's favorite top is dark blue with pale pink roses on it, but she always wears it with the same pair of white slacks that don't quite look right together in full color. Glenn has a number of hats that he cycles through that all clash horribly with his colorful clothing, but he probably doesn't know any different. When everything is grey, it's easy to match up clothing. Now that he can see color, Rick has a harder time picking out what to wear in the morning.

  
Rick glances down at the paper again, at the solid pink line and the neat, curly handwriting underneath it. Earth worms are pink, he thinks, and skin is kind of pink, especially the skin underneath fingernails. Carol tells him that women who can see color sometimes put pink makeup on their cheeks, to make it look like they're blushing all the time. Rick isn't sure why they do that, when they look pretty enough without any makeup at all; Lori hardly wears anything more than black mascara to make her eyelashes look longer, but she's still the most beautiful woman he's ever seen.

  
Rick volunteered himself to check the snares outside of camp, figuring he could use the time to explore the woods and practice his colors more without the others breathing down his throat. He's barely had a chance to even talk to Carol lately; Amy has been collecting berries and mushrooms, and Lori has been hanging around camp more often. Rick doesn't dare pull the piece of paper out of his pocket when she's around. The snares were clean, but it doesn't matter, because Daryl always comes back from a hunt with at least a string full of squirrels and rabbits.

  
The tree he's chosen to sit under provides a decent amount of shade and privacy, just about a mile outside of camp. He doesn't see much more than brown and green things out this far into the middle of the Georgia wilderness, but every so often a colorful bird lands on a nearby tree branch and he gets to practice a bit by naming all of its plumage.

  
The bushes to the left of his hiding place rustle, and at first Rick thinks it's another deer - he's seen two already, beautiful and brown, with white tails and black noses - but then Daryl comes out through the leaves, carrying his crossbow high and glancing around before his eyes settle on Rick and he sneers.

  
"What the hell are you doing here?" he asks, still not lowering his weapon, even though it's nearly level with Rick's head.

  
Rick holds up his sheet of paper, facing out so Daryl can see. He glances at it for a moment, looking kind of confused, before he surprises Rick by plopping down on the ground next to him.

  
"Been holding out, Grimes," he says, gesturing to the crinkled paper. "Thought you only knew blue."

  
"I never said that. Just didn't think you were interested in learning more than that."

  
"Well. Would be nice to know what color my socks are, wouldn't it?" He wiggles his feet, thick red socks poking out over the top of his sneakers. Rick stares at him, not sure what to say.

  
Daryl doesn't look unfriendly today, which is a first. They've known each other for all of one week already, and they've barely spoken outside of the time Rick told Daryl his eyes are blue. Daryl hunts during the day and sleeps by the fire pit at night, not even bothering to ask if he can share a tent with someone - Rick can't picture him sleeping anywhere but outside anyway, it just fits him. And Rick spends the days helping out around camp, usually assisting Carol in hopes he can get her to reveal new colors to him in between hanging laundry and cooking meals.

  
Daryl looks at him expectantly, and Rick clears his throat, feeling like he's being watched under a microscope all of a sudden.

  
"Um. Red. Your socks." He points at the corresponding color on the sheet of paper, a thick red line with the word _red_ written underneath it in Carol's neat script. "See? They're a little darker, I think, but it looks close enough. Although, pink is light red, so maybe there's a different word for dark red. If there is, I don't know it yet."

  
"Red," Daryl repeats, letting the new word settle on his tongue. He looks down at his socks, then says the word again, committing it to memory. "Blood is red. So is the Chinaman's car."

  
Rick rolls his eyes. "He's Korean, I think. But yeah. You're right."

  
Daryl hums, finally setting his crossbow down in the space between them. Rick notices fine lines of green among the black structure of the bow, something he hadn't seen before.

  
"Lemme see that, will you?" Daryl nods at the paper in Rick's hands, and Rick gives it to him after a moment's hesitation. Daryl takes it and stares at it for a full minute, holding it close to his face and tracing each line with his eyes. Rick knows what he's doing - he's trying to think of things to tie the colors into, things he can associate them with. Blue sky, green grass, red car. Rick has done the same thing a dozen times over, trying his hardest to hold onto the words in his head. He almost feels like if he doesn't remember the names of the colors, they'll disappear again and his world will be back to grey.

  
"You want me to see if Carol can help you, too? I don't know if there are any other colors left for her to teach, but she still needs to help me out with indigo, and I haven't found anything purple yet. At least, I don't think I have." He scratches his head, trying to remember. Maybe something in Atlanta?

  
"No," Daryl says, shoving the paper back into Rick's hands. It crumples a bit around the edges, folding in over the lines for _yellow_ and _pink_. "Just so you know, I don't believe in none of this _soulmate_ bullshit. We ain't friends. Can be allies, maybe, but that's it."

  
Rick takes the words like a slap in the face and stares at Daryl, feeling offended. "What the hell is it with you and me? Just 'cause you're seeing colors now, you hate me? I gave you a _gift_."

  
Daryl sneers, flaring his nostrils. "Didn't ask for it. Didn't want it. Would take it back if I could."

  
"You'd rather be seeing grey." It isn't a question. Daryl pulls his crossbow into his lap and tugs at the tight string.

  
"Yeah," he says quietly. "Sure would."

  
Rick nods. "Okay. No reason for you to be seen here with me, then."

  
"Guess not."

  
Daryl shrugs, grunts, and stands to leave. He goes the same way he came, crossbow held at the ready. Rick watches him leave, watches the way the dull red handkerchief in his back pocket sways as he walks, and he feels a tiny pang of loneliness when he's finally out of sight.

  
\---

  
Rick learns the next day that bruises are the colors _blue_ and _black_ , and they fade to _yellow_ , _green_ , and finally, _brown_. He learns it because Carol shows up to their usual meeting spot twenty minutes late, with a large black-and-blue mark on her cheek and matching injuries on both of her forearms.

  
"What happened to you?" Rick asks, like he doesn't already know.

  
Carol puts on a sheepish face, obviously practiced. "Fell down by the rocks. Scraped up my shoulder a little, too."

  
She pulls the sleeve of her modest yellow and white shirt to the side, revealing a long shallow line that's pink, with tiny pinpricks of red blood oozing out along the edges. She wipes it off with her thumb and moves her sleeve back into place, smiling down at Rick as she moves to sit next to him. He's not at all convinced.

  
"Did Ed do that?" he asks, turning to face her. She shakes her head rapidly, half of a smile still on her face like she's afraid of what will replace it if she lets it go.

  
"Told you, I fell."

  
"And last week, too? And Thursday morning?"

  
She shrugs, wincing a little as her sleeve catches on the cut on her shoulder. "I'm clumsy. Ed always said that's my worst trait. I'm working on it." She points down at the crumpled piece of paper in his hands. "Let's just practice your colors, okay?"

  
He wants to ask her more, but this is one of the rare occasions when they actually have time to be alone, with Ed sleeping in his tent and Lori out in the water with Carl. Daryl is sitting by the low fire, roasting a skinned rabbit he caught a few hours ago, and he looks up when Rick glances at him, like he can feel his stare from across the camp. Rick offers him a small smile, and gets a pointed frown in return.

  
Rick sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Why does he hate me so much? Did I do something? Do I smell?"

  
Carol leans in and sniffs his shirt, making a show of it, clearly glad for the change of subject. "Nope. A little like a Christmas tree, but nothing too bad." She shrugs, taking the paper out of his hands. "I don't think he hates you. I just think he's not quite used to the idea of having a soulmate. It can be kind of jarring at first."

  
"Yeah, I figured it was something like - Wait." Rick pauses, narrowing his eyes. "Who said anything about soulmates?"

  
Carol grins, and this time it's not an act. "You did. Just now. Funny how these things work out, isn't it?"

  
"You weren't supposed to know. Or at least not guess right. I thought maybe Amy, or Jacqui, but not _Daryl Dixon_."

  
"What, not your type?" Carol's just messing with him now. He's thankful she's at least enjoying herself, because with the beating she just took, her mood could be a lot worse.

  
"I'm not _gay_ ," Rick counters. "And I'm married. And I love my wife, so it doesn't matter anyway."

  
"Sure," Carol says, drawing the word out and wiggling her eyebrows. Rick pushes her uninjured shoulder gently, then nods down at the worn-out sheet of colors, which has a small tear in the upper right corner directly above the line for _orange_.

  
"Can we get back to work, please? I don't know how long Lori's gonna stay down there."

  
"Okay." Rick makes a grab for the paper but Carol holds it out of his reach, blocking the names of the colors with her hands. "Let's see... How about Andrea and Amy's tent?" She points to it, on the other side of the camp.

  
Rick thinks for a moment, fairly confident in his color recognition by now. "Yellow," he guesses, and Carol offers him a nod and a smile in return.

  
"That's right. The Morales's SUV?"

  
"Blue. Easy."

  
"How about the lanyard hanging down from their rear-view mirror?"

  
Rick thinks hard, trying to visualize it, because he can't make out any of the car's interior from this far away. "Um. Blue?"

  
" _Purple_ ," Carol corrects, pointing at the color on the sheet with one hand while covering up the rest with the other. "Not a very common color. Although there's somebody in camp who has purple socks. Almost turned a pair of Lori's white shorts purple before I noticed."

  
Rick chuckles under his breath. "I bet she would've looked awesome in them anyway. Probably wouldn't have even noticed."

  
Carol hums, looking around. "Dale's shirt. All three colors."

  
Dale is wearing a large Hawaiian shirt with palm trees on it, that doesn't at all match the orange shorts he's paired it with. But he doesn't know that. Rick is sure the ensemble probably looks amazing in greyscale.

  
"Pink," Rick starts, trying to look at Dale without the older man noticing. "With trees on it. So, brown and green. Right?"

  
Carol claps him on the shoulder, grinning. "You're a natural. Took me ages to learn them all, and you're already there. Just the in-between colors are left, but they're not nearly as important."

  
"And indigo," Rick adds.

  
"That one doesn't really matter, either. I don't think I've ever come across it, except in rainbows."

  
Rick wonders what it would be like to see a rainbow. They're pretty in black-and-white, arched through the sky after a long rain, but he bets they'd be even more beautiful in full color. Maybe next time it rains he'll see one. Then he can practice his colors and include indigo, for once.

  
Lori walks up over the ridge of the quarry, Carl at her hip, and Carol hastily shoves the paper back into Rick's hands. He folds it quickly and sticks it in the pocket of his jeans, crumpling it a little more. He looks up and Carol is gone, walking back in the direction of the tents, probably to go apologize to her husband for something she didn't even do.

  
He watches her go. She stops by the fire, says something to the brunet devouring a cooked rabbit carcass like a starving man, but Rick can't hear what she's saying. And then Daryl responds, Rick can see his lips moving, and he sets down his rabbit-on-a-stick for just long enough to give Carol a sideways hug around the middle, still sitting. She runs her hand through his hair like a mother and then walks away, back to her tent.

  
Daryl looks up, meeting Rick's eyes for a moment, and Rick's stomach churns. The brunet is still frowning, but he looks more sad than anything else. Rick nods at him, not sure why, and Daryl goes back to his rabbit. The strange feeling in Rick's stomach stays, even through lunch and afternoon laundry duty.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rick learns that not all colors are good, and we finally get to move on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note: I'll be keeping most major plot points from the show, but will be omitting a few I don't find necessary to the story. For example, they won't be going to the CDC in this story. I've had enough of Jenner with my other story, TS-20. Sophia also will not go missing any time soon. For numerous reasons, but mostly to move the story along faster.

Rick realizes, sometime around week two of being at the quarry, that his taste in clothing is vastly different now that he can see colors. The blue shirt he loves so much no longer matches the brown slacks he used to pair it with, and apparently red-and-white plaid with green shorts looks more like Christmas than anything else. Carol is always dressed perfectly, with matching earrings and shirts, shorts and shoes. And Lori usually gets it right as well, choosing plain colors that somehow look good together, although he doubts anything could ever look _bad_ on someone as pretty as her.

  
Even Daryl has made more of an effort on his wardrobe in the last week or so. He wears mostly blue, anyway, and always has on the same loose denim sleeveless vest, with white angel wings on the back. But the greenish shirt he wore when Rick first met him hasn't made another appearance since, and Rick notices that he's started wearing a red shirt that matches his socks, ever since Rick taught him the color.

  
Another thing that's red - Ed's blood, once somebody finally works up the courage to beat his face in. It's Shane, of course it is, and he doesn't stop until Ed's face is a bloody mess of bruises and lacerations, bright red streaming out of his nose and crusting in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Rick has seen plenty of similar scenes at work, even some worse injuries that cover the entire body, but never in such vivid detail; the colors make everything look more intense, realer and more fleshed out, like the difference between watching a movie in standard definition versus with 3D glasses on. The blood looks almost black on Ed's face, running down his cheeks and over his ears, into his hair. Carol stands over him, sobbing, her face blotchy and pink.

  
But still, she shows up two days later with fresh bruises on her wrists.

  
\---

  
Rick is sitting by the water washing clothes, watching Carl swimming with Sophia from a distance, when Daryl approaches him. At first, it looks like Daryl is just going to walk past him, carrying his crossbow like he's on his way back into the woods, but then he stops, backs up a couple of steps, and squats down on the gravel next to Rick. He holds his hand out, waiting until Rick cautiously puts his own hand out underneath it, and drops something into his outstretched palm.

  
It's a stone. A pebble, really, tiny and smooth on one side, with jagged edges on the other sides and a small crack running through the center. Rick turns it over in his hand, running his fingers along the rough surface, before he looks up at Daryl, waiting for him to explain why he just gave Rick a rock.

  
Daryl shrugs. "'s a new color. Thought you might know it."

  
Rick does know it. He smiles and holds the pebble up into the sunlight. "It's yellow. Haven't seen one like this around here. Where'd you find it?"

  
Daryl points over his shoulder, in the direction of the edge of the lake where he likes to swim alone. "In the water. Found a few more, but that one's the most... _yellow_?"

  
Rick nods. He holds the pebble back out and Daryl takes it, studying it quietly, before he sits down on the rough ground a good foot away from Rick. He rummages into his pocket and pulls out a small pink shell, like a miniature conch, with tiny white spikes on the back. He puts the pebble back into his pocket and hands Rick the shell, without even having to ask him what color it is.

  
"Pink," Rick says, running his finger along the spiny edges. "That's my newest color. Did you know it's supposed to be for girls? It doesn't look very girly."

  
Daryl hums, his hand still in his pocket. "Nah. Back's white, though. Knew that. How many colors are there?"

  
Rick shrugs, shaking his head. "Dunno."

  
"Was easier when it was just the three." Rick knows exactly what he's talking about - grey, black, and white. The only three colors that existed for the first thirty-four years of his life.

  
Rick waits for Daryl to say something snide and leave, like he always does, but he doesn't. He just sits there, eyes on the small shell and fingers on the pebble in his pocket. Rick gives him the shell back and resumes the laundry, scrubbing the same shirt for a second time just to be sure it's clean. He practices his colors as he does it, in his head - vertical blue and white stripes, pink with yellow flowers, black and blue plaid, a pair of cut-off blue short-shorts that can only belong to Amy. Daryl watches him, eyes on his hands as he runs the clothes along the washboard roughly. He doesn't comment, but Rick can almost hear the gears turning in his head.

  
"It's okay to ask me, you know," Rick says after a few minutes of silence. Daryl blinks and moves back like he's been struck.

  
Daryl shakes his head, putting the shell in his pocket next to the pebble. "Don't need to."

  
"Might make it easier, to know. To be able to sort everything out in your head. It's just a few words, you can memorize them, no problem."

  
"No." Daryl shifts in the gravel but doesn't stand up. He tucks his feet underneath him and pulls his crossbow onto his lap, fiddling with the string tension. "Soulmates don't mean nothin'."

  
Rick furrows his eyebrows, thinking hard. "So you believe that knowing the colors means you're giving into this _soulmate bullshit_? Because I'm not gay, no offense, and I'm perfectly happy with my wife. But I still want to know what colors things are. It's a _gift_ , not everybody gets it, and you should take advantage of that. _You're_ the one who wanted to know what color that rock was."

  
Daryl finally stands up, pulling his hand out of his pocket and holding it in a fist at his side. Rick doesn't look at his face, doesn't want to see the anger he knows is in dark blue eyes. He turns back to his washboard, soap making his fingers wrinkly and soft. A light pink blouse with white lace on the bottom - Lori's. He runs it gently over the board, getting out a mud stain in the middle, as he listens to the sound of Daryl's footsteps retreating. Only once he's certain the brunet is gone does he look back, noticing at once that something is beside him that wasn't there before.

  
A tiny yellow pebble with a crack running through it.

  
\---

  
Their first attack is also their last.

  
It happens in the middle of the night, when almost everyone is sleeping. Shane is awake, keeping watch from on top of the RV, and he's the first to yell out, shouting from his perch into the tents and vehicles that a horde of Walkers has breached their barriers and made their way into the campsite.

  
It takes Rick a full minute too long to leave his tent, pulling a shirt over his head and his gun out of his belt holster. He hears gunshots before he's even unzipped the tent door, instructing Lori to take Carl into one of the cars and stay there until it's over. Whatever _it_ is.

  
He sees the first Walker as soon as he's stepped onto the dirt - it's a young man, probably barely out of college, with matted black hair and icy white eyes. There's a huge bloody bite mark on his shoulder, with crusty dried bloody running down his bare arm and coating the front of his shirt. His skin is greyish, peppered with small injuries that probably occurred after his death. Rick stares at him for a second too long, his first time seeing one up close in full color like this, and nearly trips over a tent stake in the ground as he backs away with his gun held up. He shoots quickly, close enough that the bullet goes straight through the monster's forehead; dark blood oozes out of the entry wound, and the Walker falls over backwards into the dirt.

  
He doesn't have time to hesitate, to think about what he's just done, because a second later he hears a high-pitched scream from across the camp and he just knows they've already lost someone.

  
Rick begins shooting with wild abandon. Half of his shots miss, going through the Walkers' chests and arms, and they just keep coming. He doesn't have time to look for his family, to make sure that Lori and Carl made it to the cars safely. He can see Shane out of the corner of his eye, his own gun drawn and clicking with maddening speed. Gunshots and screams rip through the air, chilling Rick to his core, but he can't afford to stop. He keeps shooting until he's out of bullets, then switches to an axe and continues. It's a lot harder to lodge a semi-blunt piece of metal through a skull and into a brain than it is to just fire a gun, but Rick feels like he's running on pure adrenaline.

  
Cold sweat breaks out on his body, dripping down his curly hair, and he pulls his weapon out of a Walker's head just to turn around and lodge it into another's. He glances around, trying to count the people he knows. T-Dog with a machete, Morales with a shotgun, Shane and his pistol, and Daryl in the bed of a pickup truck, firing arrows out into the camp as fast as he can load them. A wave of relief washes over him, but it's quickly replaced when he makes his way over to the RV and spots Amy, a dead Walker by her side and a bloody bite mark in her neck.

  
He hears Andrea scream, sees her running across the minefield of Walkers towards her sister. Watches her fall to her knees, hands scrabbling through the bright red blood that's suddenly everywhere, on her arms and her face and in her hair. Staining her blue blouse purple.

  
There are thirteen Walkers in total. Rick knows because he counts them after they've all fallen, counts the dead and the undead alike. They've lost four of their own, and Jim has been bitten. Rick doesn't stop moving until everything is completely silent, not a single gunshot, scream, or even the sound of shoes scuffling on the bare dirt. Everyone just stops, counting silently. Looking around for their loved ones, naming the dead. Lori and Carl are in the back seat of the Morales's SUV, and Morales's wife and children are squeezed into the front. Next to a bright purple lanyard hanging from the rear-view mirror.

  
He drops his axe to the ground and falls on his knees, hitting the dry earth hard. Beside him is a body, a Walker with milky white eyes, open and staring - a woman, blonde hair, a tattered yellow dress, and a prominent bite mark on her left forearm. Rick shudders, leans over, and is sick all over the dry ground.

  
\---

  
For the next twenty-four hours, they bury the dead and pack up the tents. Carol sobs over her husband's body, her face blotchy and pink. Andrea shoots Amy in the head when she wakes up, splattering red all over the side of the RV. Rick practices the colors he knows in his head, but all he can see is red. It's in the ground, on the bodies, on the tents and the cars and the front of Rick's shirt. He suddenly wishes the world was back to grey, because even though the good things look better in color, the bad things look even worse. He understands, with shocking clarity, exactly what Daryl was trying to tell him.

  
And then they leave. Just like that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the abrupt change of scenery. Got kind of tired of the quarry, so we're moving on. Next up: the farm.


	6. Chapter 6

There's a deer in the middle of the woods. It's brown, with dark hooves and eyes, and white on its underbelly. It stops, looking in their direction, and for a moment the world stands still. It's just Carl and the deer, blurs of soft brown and white and the green-and-black striped shirt Carl is wearing, and everything is colorful and peaceful and perfect.

  
And then a gunshot rips through the air, rips through Carl's stomach, and he and the deer fall into the grass at the same moment.

  
Rick can't remember anything but running. Carrying his boy in his arms, screaming at the top of his lungs, rich red blood staining his shirt and his arms and his forehead. He wonders in the back of his mind when his world went from grey to red, and how to get it back, because he feels dizzy and sick and he just wishes everything could go back to being _quiet_.

  
Somehow, he makes it to a fence. He jumps over it, stumbling on his own feet, up to a large house in the middle of nowhere. An older man with white hair and a well-kept beard meets him at the door, and suddenly his boy is being pulled from his arms, laid on a bed and examined like a bug under a microscope. There's blood everywhere, and Rick is keenly aware that he's shouting, but his own words don't make any sense in his head. It's all just noise.

  
Shane appears in the doorway, puts a hand on Rick's shoulder and leads him out onto the porch. Cleans the blood off of his forehead with a dirty rag, holds his shaking hands in his palms. And all Rick can think is Lori _doesn't know_. Their son is dying on a bed in a house in the middle of nowhere, and Lori _doesn't know_.

  
He puts his hands in his pockets, feeling the solid sheet of crumpled paper and the tiny pebble with the crack in the middle. He takes a deep breath, sits down, and closes his eyes. And Shane doesn't let go of him, touching his shoulder, a hand on his jiggling leg, wiping the rag across his sweaty, bloody brow. Shane sits with him, in silence, and they wait.

  
\---

  
Lori joins them an hour later, riding on the back of a horse led by a woman named Maggie Greene. She's cute - short brown hair, bright green eyes, wearing a pale pink tank top and orange shorts that clash horribly. She must not have found her soulmate yet, and two hours later, when the rest of the group makes it to the farm, Rick realizes why.

  
Rick isn't an expert on soulmates - his relationship with his own is a testament to that - but he knows true love when he sees it. And the way Glenn's jaw drops, his eyes wide and staring, as Maggie walks up to him from across the farm, tells Rick that he's just found _the one_. Rick feels a small pang of envy at the way they're drawn to each other, like the entire thing is outside of their control, like they're just _meant to be._ He wishes he could have a love like that, but he's got Lori, and she's his _one_ , the love of his life. But they aren't soulmates.

  
Maggie looks down at her awful outfit, laughs, and runs into Glenn's arms like they're in a romantic movie. Not a hint of hesitance, no holding back, the way it's supposed to be. And Rick can't feel happy for them. Not right now.

  
"He's going to be fine," Lori says, shutting the screen door behind her and walking out onto the porch. Rick stares at his hands, at the blood underneath his fingernails. "Hershel says he just needs a few more things. The man who... _shot_ Carl, he's going. Shane volunteered to go, too. They'll be back in a couple of hours, and he's going to be _fine_."

  
Rick nods, even though he's not quite sure what she's talking about. He hears Shane's name, and Carl's, but none of the context between them. He catches the word _fine_ and his heartbeat stutters, but he knows it can't be that easy. Nothing ever is.

  
Lori points her thumb in the direction of the door, even though Rick doesn't look up to see it. "I'll be inside, with him. You should be, too. He's going to want to see you when he wakes up."

  
He hears her shoes clicking on the wooden porch floor as she walks away, but he doesn't move. He keeps his hands in his lap, staring at a spot of dark red on his knuckle that Shane hadn't managed to wipe away. He wants to wash it off, but he doesn't dare move. It feels like the world might crumble out from underneath him if he does.

  
Someone walks up the steps a few minutes later. Rick knows who it is, because everyone else is inside, and the near-silent patter of his feet slowly creeping up the wooden steps is easy to recognize. He expects Daryl to pass him by, to hear the screen door open and close again, but instead the seat on the bench next to him creaks and he can feel the pressure change in his legs. There are only a few inches of space between them. Rick wants to move away, closer to the edge of the bench, but his body won't cooperate. His legs feel like jelly and his ass has gone numb.

  
Daryl holds out his hand and presses his palm against Rick's, and for a moment Rick's pulse wavers and he manages to look up into stormy, dark blue eyes before his gaze drops back into his lap. Daryl pushes their fingertips together for a second and then draws his hand back away, leaving behind a tiny pink shell in Rick's palm. He stares at it, at the dull spikes and white back, and then curls his fingers around it loosely.

  
"Pink," Daryl says, resting his hand in the space between them on the bench. "Right? Like the cowgirl's shirt."

  
Rick nods, the motion feeling jerky and unnatural.

  
"What's left?" Daryl asks, his voice raspier than usual. "Can barely even keep up anymore. Feels like everything's a different color."

  
"Sorry," Rick croaks out, and his own voice sounds foreign in his ears. "Don't really wanna talk about colors right now."

  
"What _do_ you wanna talk about?"

  
Rick shrugs, his shoulders feeling heavy. He rubs at the smooth inside of the shell with his fingertips and closes his eyes.

  
"Nothing, really. Don't wanna talk. Don't even wanna _think_."

  
Daryl pauses, and Rick can hear his sharp exhales even with his eyes closed. The bench creaks and Rick thinks for a moment that Daryl has left, but then he realizes that he's just switched positions; Rick can feel his presence beside him, like a shadow, and it's comforting, somehow.

  
"Okay."

  
Daryl doesn't say anything else. Rick focuses on his breathing, on the wind blowing against the side of his face, and the spikes of the shell poking into his palm. And the hand, pressed gently against the side of his thigh, barely there, and it's comforting. Somehow.

  
\---

  
The first blood transfusion takes its toll on Rick before it's even over. He watches, fascinated, as the bright blue veins in his arm turn into dark red blood, running out of his inner elbow and through a thick plastic tube, straight into his son's body. There's a piece of tape holding the tubing in place, and it itches. Rick's legs feel restless and he tries to stand up, once, but Lori is at his side, forcing him back into his chair. His back aches and he's starting to feel dizzy; Shane's been gone for two hours already, and Carl still hasn't woken up.

  
Lori puts one hand on his shoulder, steadying him and keeping him still. He buries his own hands deep into his pockets, feeling the comforting edges of a piece of paper, the smooth side of a small yellow pebble, and the spikes of a pink shell. He curls his fingers around the objects, closing his eyes and focusing on what he's feeling. He pictures yellow, like the sun and Lori's favorite silky blouse, and pink, like the skin underneath his fingernails and inside of his mouth. It helps.

  
\---

  
Shane returns an hour later, without Otis. He hands Hershel the backpack full of medical tools and disappears back outside, Lori trailing him without a word.

  
Somebody peels the tape off of Rick's arm and pulls the plastic tube out. It stings, and a small spot of blood wells up from the wound. He presses a piece of gauze against it and watches out of the corner of his eye as Hershel starts attaching things to his son that Rick has no name for. Most of them are white and sterile-looking, with tubes and clamps and sharp silver things that churn Rick's stomach. He heaves into his hand and feels someone pull him to his feet, supporting him by his shoulders and dragging him out of the room. He lets them, feeling weak and dizzy and sick. He closes his eyes and focuses on the sharp exhales, and the feel of tiny spikes against the outside of his thigh.

  
"C'mon, lay down. You've gotta help me out a little here, man."

  
"Daryl?"

  
A grunt, that sounds almost like a chuckle. "Yeah. Move over, will you?"

  
Rick opens his eyes and looks around. The rooms spins a little, a blurry mixture of pale blue walls and grey carpeting. He feels soft cotton sheets beneath him and a pillow under his head. He tries to move, but his limbs won't cooperate; his entire body feels like molasses, sluggish and weak, and all he manages to do is turn his head to the side and wiggle his fingers.

  
Daryl sighs and sits down on the edge of the bed, next to Rick's legs. "Don't know whose room this is. Cowgirl told me to bring you here."

  
"Think her name's Maggie." Rick is pretty sure he's right. Hershel Greene's daughter. But he could be wrong; his head feels like it's going to explode, and the more he thinks about it the more his temple aches.

  
"Chinaman's new girlfriend, too, apparently." Daryl gives the same rough grunt, and Rick is certain now that it's meant to be a laugh. "Looks like you've got another student."

  
"Another?" Rick glances down the bed at Daryl, who's picking at his fingernails. "Does that mean you're in?"

  
Daryl shrugs, flicking a fleck of dirt across the room. The motion makes Rick feel dizzy, and he goes back to looking at the arched ceiling. "Might as well be. Ain't going away any time soon."

  
"Lori can't find out."

  
"Hm." Daryl hums. "Don't worry, ain't gonna break up your perfect little family. Just wanna be a little less confused. Nothin' makes sense anymore."

  
Rick nods even though Daryl isn't looking at him. He knows the feeling; even though he already knows most of the colors, and all of the important ones, he still feels overwhelmed by everything he sees. Blood looks too red, trees are bigger, most of his clothes don't match anymore, and blue eyes are _way_ too distracting. It's like everything is ten times larger now, right in his face, and he can't make sense of it all. He can only focus on one thing at a time, and the rest is just background noise.

  
So he looks at the ceiling, at the light blue paint chipping in one corner and the arch in the edge of the wall. There's white paint underneath.

  
"Your boy," Daryl begins, sounding hesitant. "What happened?"

  
It occurs to Rick that he hasn't told anybody yet how Carl was shot. Except for Lori and Shane, nobody else has even seen Carl since it happened. He doesn't want to talk about it. But at the same time, he _does_.

  
"There was a deer," Rick starts, picturing the scene in his head. It was beautiful, and he wishes Lori could have seen it. Hell, he wishes _Daryl_ could have seen it. "It was brown, like tree trunks, right? But softer. And a white tail, black eyes, and it looked right at him. And, Christ, I wish Carl could have seen it in full color, you know? Because it was _beautiful_. But now he might never get the chance, and I shouldn't have even taken him out there, I don't know what I was thinking."

  
To think that his son, his only child, might never get to see a rainbow, or green grass, or a soft brown deer is devastating. And before Rick has the chance to stop it, he's crying. Tears roll down the sides of his face and onto the white pillow, and he sniffles loudly and suddenly wishes he was alone. But Daryl doesn't leave, and Rick doesn't dare ask him to.

  
The ceiling blurs in a mess of moisture and he blinks his eyes closed, squeezing them shut tightly and hoping the tears will stop. He presses his hands to his mouth, choking down a sob that aches in his throat. His fingers smell like blood and dirt, and all he wants to do is bury himself in the soft blankets on the bed and cry until his lungs give out. He shifts onto his side, facing away from Daryl, and feels the familiar press of a shell's spikes against his leg. The paper in his pocket crinkles, and Rick exhales shakily.

  
He can hear Daryl breathing. Sharp, fast exhales. After a full minute, a hand comes to rest on his shoulder, giving one light squeeze and then just pressure. It feels like a weighted blanket, pushing down on his entire body and holding him in place. Secure. Safe. And Rick finally lets go, removes his hands from his mouth and cries loudly, cries with his whole body. He can feel the moisture gathering underneath his nose, and Daryl's fingertips drawing circles against his collarbone.

  
Somehow, he falls asleep. And when he wakes up, Daryl is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anybody else ship Glenn and Maggie like I do? Let's go cry about it together.


	7. Chapter 7

"I can't teach you colors anymore."

  
It takes Rick several moments to understand, but Carol's face says it all. She's looking at him like he's a stranger, a completely different person, and he suddenly realizes why. She's only seeing him in shades of grey, now. That's how she's going to be seeing everything, for the rest of her life.

  
Rick feels a sudden, intense pity well up in his chest. He's known people like this before, only a few - Morales's wife, Carl's third grade teacher, and a friend from college - but none of them have been this close to him. He hasn't really cared enough to think too much about it with the others, but the truth of Carol's sudden condition has him rattled. Because she didn't just lose her husband in the attack at the camp, she lost her _soulmate_. And whether he was a worthless human being or not, that doesn't change the fact that Carol is never going to see colors again.

  
People only get one soulmate - that's it. And sometimes they never find them, sometimes they're on opposite sides of the world and they never meet. Rick hadn't realized how lucky he was to find Daryl - to actually be given the chance to see the world in all of its beauty. He makes a mental note to keep the brunet just a little closer, from now on.

  
\---

  
Carl wakes up two days after the shooting, and Rick has never before been so excited to see the color blue as he is when his son finally opens his beautiful, bright blue eyes.

  
But he can't help but glance down at the wound - at the stark white bandage and the red seeping through. At the mark on his arm from the transfusions, identical to the one on Rick's opposite inner elbow. At his pale, almost yellow complexion, the sweat on his forehead, his black hair plastered to the sides of his face. The grey sheets pulled up to his waist, the tubes still attached to his arm, feeding him fluids and medicine. Everything starts to feel overwhelming again, and Daryl isn't here to squeeze his shoulder this time.

  
"Hey, buddy," Rick says, keeping his voice low. It's late at night; everyone else is sleeping, most of them outside in tents, but Glenn is probably with Maggie, and Lori is in the guest room. The house is too quiet. The kerosene lantern on the bedside table flickers, illuminating the room in pale yellow; it makes Carl's face look gaunt, and Rick tries not to look too closely.

  
"Dad." Carl blinks up at him, a small smile on his lips. He shifts on the bed and then grimaces, but doesn't make a sound. "Did you see the deer?"

  
Rick's pulse slows, and he's struck suddenly with revelation that his son is not only incredibly brave, but also so, so _pure_. So untainted by the world and all of its horrors. And Rick would give anything, _anything_ , to keep him that way, but he knows that the world as it is now is no place for a child.

  
"Yeah, buddy. I did." He tries for a smile and hopes that the low light hides the secrets in his eyes. The sadness, the guilt, the fear. "It was beautiful."

  
"I bet it would have been more beautiful in color," Carl says, his voice a little strained.

  
Rick hums, nodding. "We should ask Glenn about it tomorrow. Did you know he found his soulmate, here of all places?" Carl's eyes go wide like a kid at Christmas and Rick finally smiles, genuine. "She's the daughter of the doctor who fixed you up. She's pretty. I think you'd like her."

  
"Do you think she can explain the colors to me? So I can imagine them?"

  
"I bet she could." Rick wishes _he_ could. He wishes he could tell his son that brown is the color of dirt and trees, and it's soft and pretty but not as pretty as pink. He would tell him that green is a dark color, like blue, and it's sharp like grass and feels like _nature_. He'd say that red is the worst of all the colors, because it means _blood_ , but that it's also the color of Daryl's socks and his handkerchief. He'd tell his son that yellow is light, like white, like sunlight and the edges of fire and the tiny pebble in his pocket.

  
But he can't. So he doesn't.

  
\---

  
"Orange, like... Did you see Maggie's pants when we first came here?"

  
Daryl shakes his head, jiggling his legs like he's uncomfortable. They're both sitting on the ground by a low campfire on the farthest end of the Greene's property, right next to the woods and Daryl's small yellow tent. Rick points at the fire, trying to separate the colors through the flickering.

  
"Red, yellow, and orange," he says, watching the crackling logs closely. "You already know red and yellow. So see that other bit, in between? That's orange. It's kind of like a mixture of red and yellow. I don't think it _is_ , but that's what it looks like."

  
"Like Carol's tent," Daryl says, and Rick nods. Carol has been sleeping with Andrea since the attack at the camp. It makes sense - her husband died in their tent, and no amount of scrubbing would have washed away the smell of his blood. Andrea's tent is dark blue, with open flaps on either side and a wide, zipper door; Carol hasn't spent much time outside of it since she told Rick that she no longer sees colors.

  
"Have you talked to Carol? Since, you know."

  
Daryl shakes his head, poking at the dying fire with a stick. "Doesn't wanna talk to me. Think I remind her too much of what she's missing, now."

  
It had looked almost painful, for Carol to speak to Rick two days ago about her husband's death. Like she knew he could see all the beautiful things she couldn't anymore, and it hurt.

  
"Can you imagine, though?" Rick asks, not quite sure what he's saying until the words have left his mouth. "Not seeing colors anymore? It just feels so... _natural_ now. And everything is so beautiful, I don't even want to think about it all going back to grey again."

  
Daryl offers him a small smile, illuminated by the fire in shades of red and yellow. "Better do my best not to die, then."

  
Rick nudges him in the shoulder, scooting just an inch or two closer to the brunet. Their legs are nearly touching; Daryl shifts on his ankles and stares into the fire, and Rick thinks that the color red really suits him.

  
"You know," Rick says, keeping his voice low. "I might actually miss you, if that happened. Don't get your hopes up, though."

  
A pale pink blush creeps up Daryl's neck, and Rick thinks, maybe he'd miss Daryl Dixon more than the colors.

  
\---

  
Rick hasn't seen Lori in over five hours, and he's starting to get worried.

  
Carl is coloring with Sophia in the house, using a full rainbow of markers that probably look like variations of the color grey on paper to them. His bandage is white now, not a speck of red bleeding through, and he's been allowed to sit up but not leave his room. Rick wonders if Hershel will let them stay, once Carl is able to walk on his own again. He thinks that maybe he won't.

  
Hershel's world is grey, too, but it wasn't always. He won't talk about his first wife, but Rick catches him speaking about colors when he doesn't realize it - his first wife's green eyes, the red barn on the property, and the shiny blue car he used to drive into town with. He re-married to a woman named Annette, who wasn't his soulmate; Rick wonders what it's like, to have already found _the one,_ and to have to settle for someone else. He supposes it doesn't matter now; she's dead, and Hershel's world is still grey.

  
In the middle of hour six, Rick waves Glenn down to ask him about Lori. Glenn looks a little nervous, twisting his red baseball cap around on his head. Rick notices that he's dressing better now that he's seeing colors, too - Maggie probably has more to do with it than the colors, though.

  
"Hey, Glenn," Rick says, jogging the rest of the way to him across the yard. "Have you seen Lori?"

  
Glenn blinks, fingers in his hair. "I haven't seen her since this morning. Why?"

  
"You're the last person who I saw talking to her. I figured maybe she told you where she was going?"

  
Glenn shrugs, looking anywhere but at Rick. "No idea, man. Sorry."

  
Rick isn't convinced, and Glenn is a terrible liar. "What were you two talking about this morning?"

  
"I picked up some meds for her. At the pharmacy in town." He nods along to his own story, like he's trying to convince himself as much as Rick. "Pain pills. Said she had a headache. That's all I know, sorry."

  
"We have pain pills here already. Hershel's got some for Carl."

  
Glenn looks around, spotting Maggie on the porch. "Sorry, Rick, I really am. I've gotta go, though. Give Lori my best when you find her."

  
Rick knows Glenn is lying, but he lets him leave without another word. If Lori is keeping secrets from him, it's not on Glenn to tell him.

  
Rick feels a tiny pang in his chest when he sees Glenn _literally_ sweep Maggie off her feet and kiss her right there in front of the house. _That's_ how soulmates are supposed to be, he thinks. This magical connection, finding the perfect person who _completes_ you, who makes life colorful and beautiful and _worth it_. And he got stuck with Daryl Dixon, a _man_ , instead of his beautiful, amazing wife who he loves with everything he has. It's just not fair. He should be able to talk to his son about the pretty brown deer they saw in the woods, or chat with Glenn about the new red shirt he got on his last trip into town. He should get to tell Lori how beautiful she is, in full color - her brown eyes, her light skin, the dangly blue earrings she likes to wear the most. But instead he has to hide under trees and next to dying fires to talk about the beauty in the world, with people he barely knows and certainly doesn't _love_ , and it's not _fair_.

  
He eventually finds Lori, about half a mile away from the house, in a field just off of the wooded area. She's sitting in a patch of tall grass, and at first he isn't even sure it's her. But he walks closer and sees her, crouched down on the ground with her head in her hands. She's dressed in pale blue from head to toe, except for her bright pink sandals, and her hair is down over one shoulder. He stops a few feet away from her, and he can already tell she's been crying.

  
He wants to ask her what's wrong, but the words won't come. He wants to tell her she's beautiful, that her eyes are a really pretty shade of brown that makes his chest ache. He wants to put his hand on her shoulder and comfort her in silence, like Daryl did for him when he was crying over Carl. He wants to confess to her that she's not his soulmate, but that he loves her anyway.

  
She looks up at him, tear tracks running down her cheeks, her eyes puffy and swollen pink. Her hands are folded against her chest. He takes a step towards her, the dry grass rustling under his feet. He opens his mouth to say something, but all that comes out is a harsh cough that aches in his throat.

  
"I'm sorry," she says, her voice hoarse. She doesn't sound like herself. It's like he's talking to a clone; she looks like his Lori, but she doesn't sound like her. And it's not like her to sit in the middle of a field for hours by herself, without telling anybody where she's gone. It's not even like her to apologize; she's usually too proud, too confident in herself.

  
He waits for her to elaborate, but she doesn't. She sniffles, tears and snot running down her face, and then wipes at her cheeks with her sleeve. He steps towards her until he's right in front of her and then crouches down, low to the ground, until his face is level with hers. She won't look in his eyes. There are dark crescents underneath her eyes, and Rick thinks they might be _purple_ or they might be _indigo_ , but they look almost like bruises. They slept in the same tent last night; Rick thought she slept well, but obviously she didn't.

  
She holds out her hands, and at first he thinks she wants him to take them, but then she drops something into his lap, something long and thin and pink and white. Something with two little, dark pink lines on it, etched like chalk, and it takes him a full minute to understand what they mean.

  
It's a pregnancy test. That's what Glenn picked up for her at the pharmacy. It's a _positive_ pregnancy test.

  
He feels a swell of emotion - shock, confusion, and even a little bit of excitement. They've never talked about having another baby after Carl. Maybe this is what their relationship needs, a baby to care for, to bring new life into a dying world. But Lori is upset, her face blotchy white and pink and purple, and she's gripping her hands over her mouth like she's trying really hard not to speak. After a few minutes of silence, she does, and her voice sounds even more raw than before.

  
"I don't know whose it is," she admits, speaking into her hands. And suddenly the thing in his lap feels more like a curse than a blessing.

  
He has a million questions, but his throat feels painfully tight, and only one makes its way out.

  
"Why?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As a little side note, I'd like to get to know some of you guys since it looks like I'm gonna stick around. So feel free to ask me anything in the comments - I'm in an answering sort of mood. I'll start with something simple, since it occurs to me that I haven't even introduced myself on here yet. Hi, my name is Libbee :) Your turn!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is... not my best chapter. I'm sorry. And for the slow-ish updates. I'm posting as I finish, and real life is hard. I've got a 2-year-old if that explains anything. Writing time is a rare commodity.

The world feels like it's spinning, a mixture of colors blurring in front of his eyes. Green grass, a yellow fence, tiny pink lines that blur together into one big mass. This should be the happiest moment of his life, they should be hugging and smiling and not sitting in the tall grass crying and shouting. Because Lori is the love of his life, but he isn't hers.

  
It was Shane - of course it was. Rick doesn't even need to ask. He knows them both like he knows the back of his hand, and he really should have seen the signs earlier. Sneaking away into the woods together, the time they spent as a family while he was in his coma. The way she followed him around camp, the way she sometimes avoided Rick's eyes when he mentioned his best friend. And Rick doesn't have to ask _how_ or _when_ , because that doesn't matter. It happened, and it's probably still happening, and he's been so focused on the beauty in the world that he's been completely ignorant to the ugly side of it.

  
"Because he was there when you weren't," she answers, like it clears everything up. Like it'll stop the world from pitching around in front of Rick, but it doesn't. He pulls up clusters of grass in his fists and leans over, trying not to heave. His stomach acid feels like it's going to burn a hole right through him.

  
"I was in a _coma_ , Lori." He narrows his eyes, watching her closely. She won't look up, focused on her hands twisting together in her lap. Her pale blue shorts and top match surprisingly well, and a thought occurs to him that makes him feel even sicker. "What color are my eyes?"

  
She finally looks at him - or past him, her eyes zoning in on a spot over his right shoulder, a tangled patch of weeds across the field that are just a shade darker than the yellow-green grass. She doesn't answer; he can see her throat working, swallowing hard and making choked noises that barely make it out of her mouth.

  
He wants to hold her, because that's what husbands do when their wives are hurting. He wants to pull her into his arms and tell her that everything is going to be okay. He wants to kiss her tear-stained cheeks and rub her back, calm her down and make her happy. But the pit of his stomach aches and he thinks that if he makes a single move towards her he might throw up right there in the grass.

  
"What color are my eyes, Lori?" he asks again, and he can tell from the look on her face that she knows the answer. She pinches crescent-shaped fingernail marks into her palms and fidgets on her ankles, and he watches her, waiting. It takes almost five minutes before she answers him, and her voice is so quiet he wouldn't be able to hear it anywhere but in the large empty field.

  
"Blue."

  
"Blue," he repeats, feeling even worse now that he's actually heard it out loud. Like maybe there was a chance that she'd say _grey_ , but now it's gone. He tries to keep his voice level, but it comes out harsh, like a slap. "How long have you known?"

  
She hesitates, starting and stopping the same sentence three times before she gets it right. "Since college. Since I met him."

  
Rick remembers the moment like it was yesterday. He was twenty-one years old, introducing his new fiancée to his old friend from high school - Shane Walsh, reunited with him through the police academy. He'd been so certain that Lori was the one, that it didn't matter to him that being with her meant he'd probably never see colors in his lifetime. He knew she was willing to make the same sacrifice, to spend her life in a grey world if it meant they'd get to be together. And it turns out she'd been lying about it for years. She met her soulmate, and she still married Rick.

  
"How long have you-?"

  
"Just a couple of months," she answers, quickly this time. "Since the accident. Not before."

  
He reaches up and runs one hand through his curly hair, tugging on a strand until it hurts. "I was in a _coma_ , and you were screwing my _best friend_?"

  
He doesn't mean to sound as harsh as he does, but once the words are out he can't take them back. She recoils like he's hit her and turns away, sniffling loudly. A thick trail of tears rolls down her cheek and falls off of her chin onto her lap.

  
"I never meant for this to happen, Rick. You have to believe me." Her voice is pleading now, full of desperation and fear. Like she thinks she's losing him. "Soulmates don't mean anything. It's you I fell in love with, I chose _you_. And Shane was a mistake, and it's over now. I promise, it's over."

  
He wants to believe her, because she's his wife, and if he can't trust her, who can he trust? And he's found his own soulmate; he knows how it feels. How beautiful the world can be, how amazing that feeling is. But even if Daryl was a woman, even if there was a connection and a possibility for something more than whatever tentative friendship they have going for them right now, he still wouldn't act on it. Because he married _Lori_. And marriage is supposed to _mean_ something, maybe even more than soulmates.

  
He stands up, dusting dirt off the back of his pants. His knees feel weak and it takes him a minute to straighten his legs. From this high up, the world is a mixture of green and yellow and it should be calming but all it does is make him feel ill.

  
"I don't know if I can forgive you for this, Lori," he says, and he really wishes he could. He wishes she'd never told him. They could have raised the baby together, he could have spent the rest of his life thinking it was his. She could have lied to him like she's been doing for the past thirteen years. "I need some time."

  
She nods, her hair falling into her face. And he walks away.

  
\---

  
Beth Greene is the exception to many rules - that finding soulmates takes time, and that it often doesn't happen in a person's lifetime. Because she's only sixteen, and she's already found her special someone in a boy named Jimmy. He's immature, he's reckless, and her father very much disapproves. Rick thinks they're perfect for each other.

  
Carl has taken quite a liking to Beth, following her around the house and the farm on her chores once he's cleared to walk again. Rick found himself wondering, at first, why Sophia wasn't Carl's soulmate. They're young, sure, but they fit together like a puzzle. But he could say the same thing about Carl and Beth, so maybe his boy's just a charmer.

  
"Shane hasn't been around lately," Carl tells Rick one afternoon, when he's helping change his son's almost unnecessary bandages. His wound has healed to just a small hole by now, puckered and red, but it's not bleeding anymore. It'll make for a fantastic scar, to rival even Rick's own bullet wounds.

  
Rick hums, twirling a pack of gauze around in his fingers. "He's been busy on runs. We've all been helping out around here, you know that. Hershel was kind enough to let us stay, it's the least we can do."

  
He doesn't tell Carl that their stay might only be temporary, because Hershel's faith in the Atlanta survivors tends to sway from day to day. They could be here for years, or maybe just days, and Rick doesn't want to scare his son with false information.

  
Something's changed in Shane since he came back with the medical supplies for Carl. He shaved his head, but there's still a small patch missing near his temple. He goes on runs, but he doesn't take anyone with him. He still doesn't know that Lori is pregnant, and Rick figures if Lori has her way, he won't find out until the baby's actually born.

  
"Hey, dad," Carl says, watching Rick place the silky white bandage on his side. "Beth's been teaching me colors. I can't see them, but I can _imagine_ them. Did you know grass and leaves are the same color? And Beth's eyes are the same color as the _sky_."

  
Rick sees the wonder in his son's eyes and smiles. He's tempted, for a moment, to tell him everything - about Lori and Shane being soulmates, about Daryl and Carol and the piece of paper in his pocket and the tiny yellow pebble. About the pretty brown deer and the terrifying red blood. That he _knows_ that grass and leaves are the same color, and so are his favorite shirt and the walls in the kitchen. That Daryl's eyes are blue, too, the same as the sky but darker.

  
But he doesn't say any of that, because his son can only see grey, and it wouldn't be fair. He just lets him talk - about how pretty Beth is, and how beautiful she'd probably be in color; about how the barn is the color _red_ , and Beth learned that from a book Jimmy bought her after they first met about all the colors of the rainbow; about how Beth cried the first time she saw her daddy in full color, and how she wished she could have seen her mama in something other than old photographs.

  
He listens, and he hugs his son tightly, and he wishes that soulmates were something people could choose. Because then maybe Carl could have a love like Maggie and Glenn's, and maybe Lori would still want to be with him. Maybe the baby would be his, because he knows in his heart that it isn't.

  
\---

  
Daryl throws a string of dead squirrels at him by way of greeting. Rick tries to catch them but they fall into the dirt, and Daryl clicks his tongue and smirks like he's just told the funniest joke he can imagine.

  
"Brown," he declares, reaching down and picking the squirrels up from the ground, dusting them off before he slings them back over his shoulder.

  
"What do you want? A trophy?" Rick grins and falls into step beside him, making their way across the field and back towards the tiny camp the group has set up next to the house.

  
"That would be nice." He starts pointing at things at random, a tent, a car, a shirt hanging on a low clothesline between two trees. "Blue, red, pink."

  
"Looks like you've officially graduated, Mister Dixon," Rick praises him, clapping his hands slowly. "I guess I'm not needed anymore."

  
Daryl shrugs. "Guess not." Daryl wrinkles his nose, glancing from across the field at Carol. "Did you know she's been having me help her pick out clothes? It's _awful_."

  
Rick looks at her, noticing for the first time the coordination of her outfit - dark denim shorts and a slightly frilly white top with red roses on it. It _does_ look nice on her, and the colors match perfectly. They even look nice with her pale pink sandals.

  
"You did a good job," Rick says, turning back to Daryl. "Wanna help me with mine?"

  
Daryl narrows his eyes, hitching his crossbow higher up on his shoulder. "Haha. _No_."

  
They reach the camp and Daryl hands off his string of squirrels to Carol, who's busy making a fire to cook the afternoon meal. Rick never pictured her as the kind of woman who would do well with skinning animals, but she's actually really good at it. Maybe even better than Daryl, although Rick would never tell _him_ that.

  
He sees Lori from across the fire, picking dry clothes off of the clothesline. She glances up at him and then almost immediately looks down at her hands.

  
"Trouble in paradise?" Daryl asks, looking back and forth between the two of them. Rick steers them away, back towards the other end of the property, with no clear destination in mind.

  
"You could say that," he says, trying for nonchalance but coming up short. "She's been seeing colors for years and never told me. Guess I'm not the only one who's good at keeping secrets."

  
"Ouch," Daryl says, wincing. Rick barely catches the reaction, focusing on his feet as they kick the dirt while he walks. "You okay?"

  
That's a good question. Is he okay? The earth still feels like it's spinning faster than usual, and the trees in the distance are blurring together like one solid, green mass. His stomach feels knotted like someone's inside of him, twisting his inner organs together and squeezing tightly. He has to focus on his own movements, mechanical and precise, to keep from freezing. He left the pregnancy test in the field, with Lori, but he can still see the dark pink lines every time he closes his eyes.

  
He's not sure why he's telling Daryl about it, though. He barely even knows him, soulmate or not, but he feels like he should be able to talk to the brunet about it. They're bonded, whether they like it or not. And it's not like he wouldn't have found out eventually anyway; Lori isn't talking to Rick, Rick doesn't particularly want to talk to her either, Shane is nowhere to be seen, and eventually her belly's going to be the size of a watermelon.

  
"I don't know," Rick finally admits, stopping by Daryl's tent and staring down into the dusty grey ashes that were a fire just last night. "I don't think so."

  
Daryl sticks his hands into his pockets and toes at the dirt with his shoe. "Sorry, man. Wish I could help."

  
Rick offers him a small smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes. "You do, most of the time. I'm just not sure how to feel right now."

  
Daryl nods, looking at the ground. His tent is open, and the zipper door is flapping in the breeze. He pulls one hand out of his pocket and touches Rick's palm, just for a moment. Rick's fingertips tingle and the back of his neck prickles. Daryl presses something into his hand and Rick closes his fist around it automatically.

  
It's a button - small and star-shaped, with two tiny holes poked through the middle. It's about the size of Rick's thumb nail, and it's smooth on the top. It's a little dirty, like Daryl found it in the woods, and Rick thinks that he probably did.

  
"It's purple," Rick whispers, staring at the tiny object like it's a treasure in his hand. It's light purple and shiny, and Rick has no idea what to make of the gesture, but it feels kind of nice. He can feel the press of the tiny yellow pebble and the pink shell in his pocket, and he has no idea why he keeps them, but they're from Daryl. And that's enough of a reason for him.

  
"Yeah," Daryl says, shrugging and nudging his cheek with his shoulder, kicking some dry dirt into the fire pit. "Like the lanyard in the Morales's car, right?"

  
Rick nods, dumbfounded, and drops the button into his pocket with the rest of his trinkets. He almost misses the small smile into the sleeve of Daryl's shirt, but he doesn't. And he almost forgets for a moment about Lori and Shane and the baby. But he doesn't.


	9. Chapter 9

Daryl flops down on the bed, jostling Rick awake. Rick grimaces and pulls the blanket higher up, around his neck, and groans into his pillow.

  
"It's _raining_ ," Daryl says, like he's just discovered a closely guarded secret. Rick, face smushed halfway into the pillow, blinks his eyes open and looks through the window. Thick rain drops are running down the glass, and the sky is a dark, swirling grey covered in clouds.

  
"Congratulations," he mutters, closing his eyes and listening to the patter of rain hitting the window.

  
"Isn't it pretty?" Daryl pushes Rick's legs aside and makes himself comfortable. He's already dressed - in a dark grey shirt and denim jeans, with his bright red socks pulled up under his boots. Rick doesn't know what time it is, but he doesn't want to get out of bed. It's been a long week, and it's only Wednesday.

  
Lori has started sleeping in their shared tent outside, leaving Rick in the house with Carl. Rick thinks she's probably sleeping next to Shane, but he doesn't check because he really doesn't want to know. She hasn't spoken to him since the pregnancy reveal. Rick doesn't want to talk to her anyway; there's a hard lump in his throat every time he tries to, and his stomach aches whenever he sees her.

  
"You should go outside," Daryl says. "It looks even better from outside."

  
"Is that why your hair's wet?" Rick asks, turning and looking at the wet spot on the blanket and the water dripping down the sides of Daryl's face. His hair looks darker when it's wet - more the color of tree trunks, a deep brown that's almost black. He shakes his head and a few droplets land on Rick's arm.

  
Daryl shrugs. "It's like a free shower."

  
And it's true, really. Besides showering and meal times, the rest of Rick's group have been kept mostly outside of the house. And Rick's only ever seen Daryl inside when they're talking, when Daryl comes to wake him up in the morning or check on Carl.

  
Rick wriggles his feet underneath the blankets, touching one of them against Daryl's thigh. The warm, solid contact is soothing.

  
Daryl pauses, looking like he wants to say something serious, and Rick looks down, knowing exactly what's on his mind. He wants to ask Rick about Lori - maybe about how he's feeling now, a few days later, or about how the conversation happened and what she said to hurt him so badly. Maybe he wants to know if they'll ever reconnect, or if they'll even ever speak to each other again. Maybe he found out about the baby, maybe he's concerned about how much time Rick's been spending in bed the last couple of days. But he doesn't say any of that. He blinks, staring at the ridges of the blanket where it's folded over on itself, and reaches out to smooth them down before he talks.

  
"What's your favorite color? So far?" The question takes Rick completely by surprise, and for a moment he's not sure he's heard right. He looks back at Daryl, seeing a seriousness in his expression that he hasn't seen for days. "No, seriously. I'm curious. They all kind of look the same after a while, but there's got to be one that you like the most."

  
_Blue_ is the first word that pops into Rick's mind, and he wonders where it came from. Maybe the sky? It's nice to look at, especially when it hasn't been raining. He's got a nice blue shirt he likes, it's soft and the same color as the pretty birds he sees flying around sometimes. But he's not sure if it's his _favorite_ color.

  
"What's yours?" he asks instead, watching Daryl's expression. Daryl shifts a bit, creating more contact between them, and warmth spreads through Rick's legs from his toes.

  
Daryl hums, thinking. "Maybe green? It's _everywhere_ , but it's not annoying. Like nature. I like it."

  
Daryl looks at him, expecting an answer, but all Rick can see is blue. Shiny blue eyes, dark and wild like the sky before rain, and Rick's throat tightens.

  
The rain beats against the window like a drum, drowning out the silence. Rick cycles the colors he knows through his head, trying to pick one, anything just to have something to say to Daryl. He could say brown, because that's the color of Lori's eyes. Or pink, because of Lori's favorite top. Or orange, like Carl's brightly colored sandals. But he keeps circling back to blue, like the very first color he saw, and he can't get it out of his mind.

  
So he says it. And he doesn't miss the pink in Daryl's cheeks or the way he ducks his head down quickly, staring at the edge of the mattress. He thinks he should be embarrassed, maybe, but it's the truth. And Rick's honestly glad that Daryl Dixon's pretty blue eyes were the first color he saw.

  
\---

  
Shane comes back from a run four hours later, and immediately Rick can tell there's something off about him. He stops at the edge of the fence, bag in hand, and Lori meets him there. Rick watches from the porch, but he's too far away to hear what they're saying. It's an animated conversation, though, full of arm movement and footsteps, and at one moment Shane tries to walk away and Lori catches him by the arm, pulling him back.

  
Rick feels like he shouldn't be watching. This is a private matter, but Lori involved him the moment she told him that she was pregnant.

  
Shane moves his hands to Lori's shoulders and says something very close to her face, then drops his arms and takes a step backwards. She pushes her hair out of her face and covers her mouth with her hand, and a minute later he walks away, back towards the house. Rick sits still on the bench, hoping Shane won't notice him, fiddling with his thumbs in his lap. Shane stomps up the steps, rattling the old wooden porch, and stops two feet away from Rick, staring down at the floor.

  
"You knew, huh?" he says, and it isn't a question. Rick nods slowly, but Shane doesn't look up. "She told you before she told me. How's that supposed to make me feel?"

  
Rick squints in the sunlight, watching Shane's posture closely. His shoulders are squared and he's standing tall, with his hands in fists at his sides, but he doesn't look angry. Hurt, maybe; confused, frustrated, upset. He's talking to his shoes, and his voice is wavering just a little.

  
"I'm her husband," Rick says, trying not to sound too harsh. "It's my baby."

  
Rick knows even as he says it that the words lack conviction. He doesn't really believe that the baby is his, and it wouldn't matter even if it was. Lori still cheated on him, still kept Shane a secret for _years_. Since before Carl was even born. Since before they were married and she vowed to Rick to love and cherish him for the rest of her life. He's not even sure he feels like her husband anymore. Now that he knows she has a soulmate, he feels like stepping between them is intruding on something bigger than any of them. A _husband_ can't compete with a _soulmate_. There's no way she would ever choose him.

  
But she did. When she married him. When they had Carl. When she put Shane aside for so many years to be with Rick. She chose _him_.

  
"I'm her _soulmate_ ," Shane says, spitting the word like venom. "That's supposed to _mean_ something, last time I checked."

  
"I wouldn't know."

  
"No, you wouldn't, would you." Shane shifts on his feet, the slats in the porch creaking under his feet. "Because she picked you, not me. And she's still picking you. Doesn't matter what I have to say."

  
"Is that what she told you?"

  
Shane shrugs, lifting his eyes just a bit. "Didn't have to. Said there's no way we can be together, and if it's you or me, that means she picked you."

  
"Or maybe she picked neither of us, because last time I checked, she wasn't even speaking to me."

  
The tension in Shane's shoulders gives just a little bit, and he finally looks up, making unsteady eye contact with Rick. Rick shifts in his seat, feeling the familiar press of the tiny objects in his pocket against his thigh, the crinkle of folded paper in his other pocket. He focuses on the colors in his mind - yellow, pink, and purple - and on the dark sky overhead, just past Shane's shoulder. It's stopped raining, but the clouds are still dark, thin and grey, and the grass is shiny with collected water.

  
"Yeah?" Shane says, a little disbelieving. Rick nods. "She played us both, man. Why the hell didn't I realize it earlier?"

  
Rick is lost for words, because he didn't realize it either. He still doesn't, to be honest. He can't possibly fathom why his wife, the love of his life, the most beautiful woman he's ever seen, would do something like this to him. To both of them. The Lori he knows, the one he fell in love with, would never do that. But she did, and she still is, and that absolutely breaks his heart.

  
"You don't know what it's like, brother," Shane continues, speaking more to himself than Rick. "When I met her, _Christ_ , it was so _amazing_. It was like I was a blind man and then I could just _see_ , just like that. She was the first thing I saw, all dressed in red, and I didn't even know what the colors were then but I knew I had never seen anything more beautiful in my life. And it didn't matter that there were a dozen other women there, and they were all gorgeous, because she was the _one_ and I knew it, you know? And I thought she saw it too. It was the most amazing feeling in the world, and I hope you get to feel it someday too, brother. Because there's nothing like it."

  
Rick nods, feeling uncomfortable suddenly. His face feels hot, and his shirt feels two sizes too tight, squeezing against his collar painfully. He wants to tell Shane that he _does_ know that feeling, because he felt it too, and even though he isn't in love with Daryl like Shane is with Lori, he still understands. Because the first thing he saw was Daryl Dixon's eyes, the most stunning shade of blue he's ever seen, and he'll never forget what that moment felt like.

  
And he realizes, in an instant, that he'll never get to share that feeling with Lori. He thought he knew what loving another person was like, but it was never the way Shane is describing it. They _fit_ , they fell together like a puzzle, and Rick thought that was everything, but it's not. Because he wasn't the person who made her see colors, and he'll never have that magical moment with her that she shared with Shane. And he knows, deep down, why she did what she did. But that doesn't mean he forgives her for _lying_ to him about it, for making him believe they were in love for so long. For giving him everything and then just taking it all away.

  
But it isn't Shane's fault. He found his soulmate, and Rick was just the thing that got in his way.

  
"I hope so, too," Rick mutters, staring down at his lap. He touches the outside of his pocket, feeling the sharp edges of a tiny yellow pebble at the very bottom. And he wonders if he'll ever really feel like that - like his entire world exists inside of another person. He thinks maybe, maybe, it's still possible for him.

  
\---

  
There's a rainbow in the sky around midday, and the reaction is astounding. Everyone who can see colors, and even a few who can't, are drawn outside to stare at the sky. The air is moist and smells like rain water, and the grass squelches under Rick's feet as he walks out into the field. Daryl steps beside him, holding his crossbow over his shoulder, and his eyes are almost the same shade as the sky peaking through the clouds.

  
The rainbow is everything Carol told Rick it would be. Every color he knows, all laid out together in one huge arch. He can pick apart the colors - from red to purple and everything in between - but they also blend together almost seamlessly. The longer he looks, the sharper the colors become, until they're so strong and bright they hurt his eyes. Daryl blinks next to him, pure awe on his face, and Rick wishes he could bottle this feeling and keep it with him forever. And he has Daryl to thank for it, for everything, for all of the beauty he's able to see in the world. Not even Lori could give him that.

  
He glances around, watching the other sets of eyes that are drawn to the rainbow. Glenn and Maggie - hand-in-hand like a couple of newlyweds, and Rick can't even fault them for it; Beth and Jimmy, sitting on the porch together staring up at the sky; Carl, watching the strips of grey shining in the sky like he's never seen them before. Rick sees Shane, on the other end of the farm, glance up for a full minute before turning his attention back to his gun. Rick bets he's seen at least one other rainbow in his life, since he met Lori so many years ago, and it hurts to think that Lori's witnessed this miracle without him. But Daryl hasn't, and Rick's heart swells a little at the realization.

  
Carol doesn't look up, continuing her washing like nothing out of the ordinary is happening. Rick watches her for a moment, sees her stiff movements and the way she wipes her eyes into her sleeve when she thinks no one can see. His chest aches, and he takes a single step closer to Daryl until their shoulders touch.

  
The rainbow shimmers high over the farm for hours. Rick watches it until his head aches, and even when he goes inside of the house he still sees it through the windows. He pulls his trinkets out of his pocket and holds them up to the light, comparing the colors. There are infinitely many shades between each color, and Rick believes that now more than ever, because no two items of the same color are exactly the same. His tiny pebble is yellow, but it's dark, grainy and flecked with brown, and the yellow in the rainbow is bright like the sun. His shell is pink, like the shade between red and orange in the rainbow, but muted, lighter to match the near-white coloring on the back. And the button is purple, dark and rich, but in the rainbow it's _violet_ , like Carol told him, and it's different. It's the same color, with different names and different appearances, and Rick isn't even sure he's learned anything at all when he really thinks about it. Because Daryl's eyes are blue, but they're not _sky_ -blue, and he wishes he had a name to give them.

  
The blue in the rainbow is beautiful, but it's not _Daryl_. And, Rick thinks as he stares out the window at the slowly fading colors in the sky, blue just might be his favorite color after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh no I think I'm starting to sympathize with Shane. Somebody help. I think I liked him better as a total nutcase.   
> (Also as a side note, I'll never like Lori. Sorry. She'll never not be a villain in my mind. So if she sounds a bit bitchy in this story, it's because that's how I see her. There's no redemption, I just don't like her).


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late-ish update. As a bonus, this chapter is a bit longer than usual. 
> 
> Just a reminder: In this AU, Sophia is still very much alive and will likely remain that way because I like her. Also the Morales family will be sticking around for a while too. Not for any particular reason.

A sheet of thick, laminated paper is thrown at Rick's face early in the morning, before the sun's even properly risen. It nicks him in the nose, startling him awake, and he throws his hands up to swat it away before he realizes that Daryl is on the other end of the paper, and Daryl is in his bed, and it's not even six in the morning yet.

  
"Christ," he breathes, turning under the sheets and doing a quick check to make sure everything is covered. He's got one leg out and his bare arms over the sheets, and Daryl is holding out the folded paper with a broad grin on his face. "What the hell is that?"

  
"Good morning to you, too," Daryl says, smoothing the paper out on the bed next to Rick's legs. It's white, but when Daryl unfolds it Rick sees splashes of color, at first in just the corners and then _everywhere_.

  
"What _is_ that?" Rick repeats, pulling himself up into a sitting position to see it better. The paper is huge, covering at least half of the bed, and filled with circles that show every color Rick knows and even a few he doesn't.

  
Daryl points down at a circle filled with different shades of red. "They're color wheels. Beth gave it to me."

  
"You told _Beth_ about us?" Rick says, realizing belatedly that there really is no _us_. Just because they're soulmates doesn't mean they're ever going to be a unit like that.

  
"Didn't have to. She saw us looking at the rainbow, figured it out on her own. But don't worry, she thinks Lori's your soulmate. I didn't tell her anything."

  
Rick sighs, rubbing at his temple. It's way too early to have a headache. "And _what_ , exactly, are we supposed to do with this?"

  
"Carol told you about _shades_ , right? And I figured you'd want to know some. So I asked if she had any books and she gave me this. It's nice, right?"

  
Rick doesn't even have time to process the fact that apparently Daryl and Beth are best friends all of a sudden when the paper is shoved towards him and all of his focus is taken up by the sheer _number_ of colors there are. There has to be at least a hundred different shades, printed and named on the stark white paper. The laminate is peeling in one corner and the paper itself is crinkled even more than the sheet in his pocket, but it's still mesmerizing. Rick isn't sure which color to focus on first, but his eyes are automatically drawn to _blue_.

  
There's a wheel just devoted to blue, ranging from a dark blue that's almost black to a light blue that looks like the sky on a sunny day. He scans the wheel until he comes across a color that looks familiar - _cerulean_. It looks so much like Daryl's eye color that it's jolting.

  
Daryl sees him looking and points down at a thin piece of the wheel, a shade called _azure_. "That's yours. Your eyes. Closest I could find."

  
Something stirs in Rick's chest at the thought that Daryl has already spent time looking on this chart for the exact color of Rick's eyes. It makes his heart beat just a bit faster and he forgets exactly what he was thinking about.

  
He stares down at the wheels, naming as many things as he can. _Forest green_ , that's an easy one - the same color as the leaves on the trees and the bushes outside. But then there's also _emerald_ , which is kind of like grass, except for the yellow-green grass in the field which is more like _pear green_. He wonders if that's what color pears are, and realizes he hasn't seen a single pear since he started seeing colors. It's a strange revelation, and he's not sure what to do with that information.

  
The red color wheel is even more interesting, because he sees so many shades he recognizes but has had no name for until now. _Crimson_ is definitely the color of blood, even though sometimes it looks more like _ruby red_ and even _vermillion_ after it's dried. Rick looks down at Daryl's socks, which are starting to fade a little from their previous brightness, making them look more _burgundy_ than anything else. Daryl points again, his finger landing on _scarlet_.

  
"That one's my favorite, I think. I've seen it somewhere, but I can't remember where."

  
Rick nods, looking down at the color. It's bright, rich and very _red_ , and it's kind of nice. But it looks too much like blood, and Rick's had more than enough of that for a lifetime. That's one thing he wouldn't mind going back to grey.

  
There's even a separate color wheel just for the shades in between black and white. It turns out that there are actual names for the grey he's been seeing all his life. If he thinks hard enough, he can even picture them in his head, like he's seeing them all over again. _Ash grey_ is dark and smoky, like the color of tree trunks before they were brown. _Fossil grey_ is lighter, like the sky on a cloudless day, and _slate grey_ is almost black, like the color of Lori's eyes when they were grey. He looks at _pebble grey_ and thinks that the small stone in his pocket looks much better in yellow.

  
There are so many wonderful colors, Rick could never pick a favorite even if he wanted to. Even blue, which he's inclined towards for some reason, is split into at least a dozen different shades, and they're all equally beautiful. It's like comparing the sky to the water, or Carl's eyes to Daryl's. It's impossible to pick out of so many pretty things, and after seeing grey for so long, every color - even brown and blood-red - is incredible. It's overwhelming, and for a moment Rick forgets to breathe, staring down at the tiny cursive words printed beside each color until the corners of his vision blur to white.

  
"Thank you," he manages after several long, silent minutes.

  
"Thank Beth, not me," Daryl says, shrugging. He shifts on the bed until one of his feet touches Rick's leg, and Rick wants to say it again because he doesn't think Daryl understood. Because he's not thanking him for the piece of paper.

  
\---

  
He's a little disappointed when he figures out that the sheet of color wheels won't fit in his pocket. He tries, but it sticks out over the top and pokes him in the thigh and is just generally uncomfortable, and Daryl laughs at him for a solid minute before Rick gives up and sticks the folded paper into the top desk drawer next to the bed.

  
He manages to thank Beth later, catching her pulling weeds outside by the water wells late in the afternoon. She's wearing a pretty pink tank top and light blue denim jeans, with her hair pulled back, and Rick thinks that Carl was right - her eyes really are the color of the sky. _Sky blue_ , he thinks, and wonders who decided to name it that of all things.

  
She gives him a pointed look over her shoulder, smiling, and asks him which color he likes best. He wishes she wouldn't, because it's so hard to pick when they're all so wonderful, but his tongue forms the word _cerulean_ before he can even think about it. And she gives him a look that says she knows something he doesn't and goes back to pulling weeds.

  
\---

  
They've been lucky so far - not a single Walker has made its way onto the farm since Rick and his family arrived.

  
Their luck runs out sometime around week three, after Carl's injury has healed completely and Hershel is stuck halfway between telling the group to leave and asking them to stay.

  
Rick is still staying in the guest bedroom, with Carl just one room over down the hall, and Daryl has made a routine out of waking him up in the morning, most often by shoving something in his face or kicking his legs under the blankets. Rick isn't a morning person, but he's gotten used to Daryl's presence. Once, he almost asks the brunet to stay the night - just to make it easier to wake him up in the morning, of course - but then he realizes how inappropriate that would be. They're technically soulmates, but they're also both grown men, and besides the occasional shoulder-brushing they're still in the awkward-eye-contact stage of their relationship. Which is really unfortunate, because Rick really likes Daryl's eyes.

  
Rick spends the days outside mostly, floating between helping with yardwork and doing laundry with Carol. Daryl hunts, and they meet up sometime in the late afternoons without even planning to. It takes Rick nearly a week to memorize the color wheel - and even then, he still likes to take it out and look at it whenever he gets the chance, just in case he sees anything he recognizes. He's learned a variety of new colors, from the _maroon_ red barn behind the house to the _amethyst_ purple lanyard hanging from the rear-view mirror in the Morales's car.

  
The pebble in his pocket is _honey yellow_ , the shell is _rose pink_ , and the button is _violet_. He even matches up the colors on the paper Carol made for him to their shades. It's interesting to find out that not all colors are the same, even if they have the same name. _Orange_ could mean anything from _marigold_ to _ginger_ and everything in between. Knowing that makes the world seem ten times bigger, and Rick finds himself paying more attention to the little details in everyday life - the clothes he's washing, the plants he's picking, and even the ornate dishes they eat out of at meal times. Everything has its own unique color, and even though he can match up almost anything to a _similar_ shade, he thinks that maybe no two colors are exactly the same.

  
He's actually starting to settle in on the farm. He feels comfortable, safe, and there's so much beauty all around him that it's overwhelming sometimes. He hasn't seen the ugliness of the world in so long, it feels like a dream. Like maybe the apocalypse isn't real, the monsters in his nightmares don't exist, and there's nothing more to life than picking flowers and spending some well-earned time with the people he cares about. Which includes Daryl Dixon now, of all people.

  
"There are Walkers in the barn."

  
He stares at Glenn like he's not quite sure what he's hearing, because there's no way that's right. He's seen that barn from all angles, day and night, and even though he's never actually been inside of it, it's impossible to think that there are _monsters_ walking around just behind the doors. He's never heard anything, not a groan or the shuffling of feet, and certainly Hershel would have _told_ him. Because they're on the same page, they both want what's best for their people, and Hershel would never endanger his own family like that.

  
But Glenn is convinced, and he's _scared_ , and that's enough for Rick. So he takes a look, he climbs up the ladder at the back of the barn and peers down inside of it, and sure enough, Glenn's right. There are at least ten Walkers trudging around on the straw floor, bumping into walls and each other and aimlessly walking around in circles. They look almost harmless, dressed in the clothes they died in, and from a distance Rick can almost call them people. But they aren't, and as soon as he reminds himself of that, the fear starts to set in.

  
He wants to ask Hershel about it, because surely there's a logical explanation. Rick can't think of one, but there has to be. Because his people, his _family_ , are sleeping outside, just a few feet away from a nest of Walkers. And he's been blind to it this whole time, picking _vegetables_ and playing _farmer_ , letting himself forget about the way the world is now.

  
But Shane hasn't forgotten. And Rick is barely out of the barn and back on the grass before Shane is there, crowbar in one hand and a loaded gun in the other.

  
"Brother, we can't," Rick protests, holding him back with his arm. "We need to talk to Hershel first, find out what this is all about."

  
There's something in Shane's eyes that Rick hasn't seen before, a fire, something bright and desperate and _terrifying_. It's like he's not even there anymore, someone else is in his body, and they're out of control. He swings the crowbar in Rick's direction and Rick barely moves his arm away in time to avoid getting hit, but Shane doesn't even seem to realize he's doing it.

  
"They're _monsters_ , Rick. I don't care what Hershel thinks. They're a danger to us all. To _Carl_. To _Lori_."

  
Rick realizes exactly how he's feeling, because he's felt it before. A fierce protectiveness for his own family. And right now, Shane thinks Lori and Carl are _his_. Rick wonders what would happen if he ever got in the way of that.

  
"We can talk about this. Come to a solution. There has to be a reason Hershel is keeping them here; if we can just hear him out..."

  
"I can't, brother." Shane's voice is pleading, but it's edged with a roughness that Rick has heard only when he's spoken to criminals. It's the voice he uses when he's arresting someone, when he's chasing down a bad guy on the other end of a gun, an enemy, someone he won't hesitate to hurt if it becomes necessary. Rick has never been on the receiving end of it before, and his heart is pounding so loudly he can barely hear himself think.

  
"Please, Shane," he says, dropping his arm but not stepping away. "Just let me talk to him."

  
For a moment, just a second, it looks like Shane is going to agree with him. He lowers the crowbar and looks down at his gun, turning it around in his hand like he's just realized he's holding it. It's silver, a shiny grey with a black grip, and Rick has seen it dozens of times on patrols. Shane taps on it with his fingertips, looks up at Rick, and pulls his lower lip between his teeth.

  
And then he pushes Rick to the side, into a patch of dry dirt, and slots the crowbar in between the two chipping red barn doors. Rick struggles to his feet, scraping dirt underneath his fingernails, and lunges at Shane, but something holds him back.

  
"Just let him," Lori whispers in his ear, her arms around his chest. "It was going to happen anyway."

  
"You're _defending_ what he's doing?" Rick spits, trying to push her arms off. She holds tight, pressed against his back.

  
"I'm not," she says. "But you know he's going to do it, whether you want him to or not. Or someone else will. It doesn't matter. It has to be done."

  
He bites back a retort, feeling a burning itch underneath his skin where she's touching him. He used to love being held like this by her, feeling her bare skin against his shoulders. Even when she was grey, she was beautiful. _Steel grey_ eyes and _charcoal_ hair, and those dangly blue earrings she always wore. And the whole time, he didn't know anything about her. He didn't get to see her look at a rainbow for the first time, didn't get to share the moment when she realized what her favorite color was. She matched her clothing perfectly, but it wasn't for his eyes. And even now, now that he knows, he can't bring himself to tell her that he's found his soulmate, too. He wants more than anything to feel that with her, to pick apart the color wheel next to the love of his life and pair her eyes with the color _mocha_. For her to tell him that his are _azure_ , pointing up at the sky like that's what she sees when she looks into them. But he knows that she doesn't. Because even now that he knows, she still won't share that with him. He saw those tiny pink lines on that pregnancy test, and she still thinks they were grey.

  
He hears a _crack_ before he sees it, and within seconds the barn door is pulled open, just enough to allow a single person through - or a Walker. They come out one at a time, and Rick stands there to the side with Lori's arms around him and watches it happen like it's in slow motion.

  
The first Walker is a woman, with long grey-blonde hair and milky white eyes. Her dress, blue-and-black, is torn and hanging off of her emaciated body like a sack, and she's got a bite mark on her forearm and another on the side of her neck. She walks slowly across the yard, looking around blindly and gnashing her teeth, and Shane stands back for a moment before he raises his gun and shoots her in the head, just like that. The others surrounding the barn - Andrea, Glenn, Morales, Daryl - all pull out their own weapons; Daryl looks at Rick first, glancing at Lori just behind him, and raises his crossbow unsteadily. He aims it at the next Walker's head, but doesn't let the arrow fly until it's halfway towards him.

  
Rick doesn't pull out his gun. Even if Lori wasn't holding him back, he wouldn't. The others have it covered, and they make easy work of it, but it doesn't feel right to Rick. It's like shooting a caged animal, and it's on Hershel's property - the man has been kind enough to give them a safe place to stay and plenty of food, and this is how they've repaid him. It makes him feel sick.

  
There's blood on the lawn, spilling out of the heads of the downed Walkers and soaking into the dry dirt. Rick watches it, focusing on the ground, and he can almost pinpoint the moment it goes from _ruby_ to _garnet_. Lori lets go of him a few minutes into it, after the first six Walkers have left the barn, but Rick doesn't move. The skin of his back stings and he slides one hand into his pocket, running his fingers along the smooth side of the small yellow pebble and trying to picture it in his mind. The crack in the middle, the splashes of brown on the back. The pink shell and the purple star-shaped button. Daryl Dixon sitting beside him, pointing at shades on the color wheel and telling him that his eyes are the color _azure_.

  
He doesn't feel safe, and he doesn't feel grounded. His chest aches and he feels like he's going to vomit, looking at the blood and torn-apart bodies on the ground in front of him. He wishes he was back in bed, with Daryl's feet pressed up against his leg and the laminated white paper spread out between them. He wishes he was back in Atlanta, in the camp, sitting underneath the shade of a large tree and drawing colorful lines on a piece of paper with Carol. He wishes he was home, with Lori and Carl, in a grey world that's full of ignorance and bliss.

  
The last gunshot echoes in the air, and somebody screams, and he falls onto the dry dirt on his ankles. There's blood right in front of him, so close he could reach out and touch it, and the grey-blonde hair of the first female Walker is splayed out in the corner of his vision. Somebody puts a hand on his shoulder, and a breeze blows his hair around his ears. And the world feels like it's spinning, a chaotic mess of blurry colors, and he wishes, in the back of his mind, that everything was back to grey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The pacing may be a tiny bit off in the second half of this chapter. I'm trying to incorporate as much of the show as I can, while still keeping it original. So please don't complain if I've left anything out or added parts that weren't in the show. This is an AU. 
> 
> Also, you guys have no idea how much time I've spent looking up colors for this story. And apparently when you google 'shades of grey' you don't get a color wheel. Very frustrating. My favorite color (not that anybody really cares) is turquoise. Fun fact of the day :)


	11. Chapter 11

The screaming doesn't stop until Daryl pulls Rick up and drags him back into the house, depositing him on the bed and sitting down next to him. There's a small fleck of blood on the top of one of Daryl's hands, and he wipes it off on the red handkerchief in his back pocket. Rick stares at his lap, at the dirt buried into the fabric of his pants, at the shaking fingers clawing at the hem of his shirt. He feels like he's going to throw up if he opens his mouth, so he doesn't say anything.

  
He's seen a lot worse carnage on the job; hell, he's seen worse since waking up from his coma. All of the bodies wrapped in white plastic and covered in flies and maggots, lined up single-file outside of the hospital. The Walker they pulled from the well a week into their stay on the farm. The woman on the ground by the bicycle, the lower half of her body torn off and her skin pulled back from her bones. Rick has seen blood, even in color, and it's never churned his stomach like this. And it's not even because the Walkers were trapped; for the safety of his own family, he would have killed them himself if he had to. It's not because Hershel didn't know, still doesn't, because he's sure Hershel will understand if Rick explains it to him right. It's Shane - all of it. It's the look in his eyes, the muscles bulging in his upper arms as he pried the door open and let the monsters out. It's the way he spoke to Rick, like he was talking to an enemy, not a brother. It's what happens now, because Rick honestly doesn't know and that's terrifying.

  
He's barely even aware that Daryl is touching him, rubbing small circles into his back through his shirt, and he's saying something, but Rick feels like he's underwater - everything is distorted and blurry. The walls are leaning too far in, too close, and Rick scoots back a few inches until he's pressed against the front of Daryl's knees. He feels hot and uncomfortable, his shirt too tight, sweat beading on his forehead and the back of his neck. The colors he sees are muted, blurring together into one big mass that's almost white but maybe closer to grey.

  
There's shouting outside; he can hear it through the walls, a female's voice raised and angry, but he can't identify who it belongs to. The front door opens and then slams shut, and he flinches, his entire body reacting. He wishes he was still outside so he could see what's happening, what Shane's doing now, where Lori is, if Hershel has found out yet. But he's not sure if he'd be able to handle it, and Daryl's hand feels so warm and soothing, and if he closes his eyes the colors stop blurring together for a moment.

 

"I'm sorry, Rick," Daryl whispers, so close that it startles Rick. His hand stills, and Rick wants to tell him to keep moving, but he can't find the words. 

 

"Me, too."

  
\---

  
The first Walker, the female with the grey-blonde hair and torn-up dress, was Beth's mother. The first time she got to see her mama in full color besides in photographs, and she was lying dead in front of their home. Rick hears Beth crying through the walls, from the other side of the house. He doesn't know where Maggie is, but he hopes Glenn is with her.

  
They don't bury the bodies, they burn them, except for Beth's mother and her brother, because they're family. The fire is red and yellow and orange, and Rick picks apart the colors with his eyes until his head aches. Daryl holds on to his upper arm, keeping him steady, and all he can think is that he failed. Because he was trying so hard to protect his own family that he forgot about everyone else. He forgot about Beth, and Hershel, and he forgot about Shane. Something was changing inside of his brother and he didn't realize it until it was too late.

  
He thinks it has something to do with Otis. Shane's hair is growing back patchy in a couple of places, and he hasn't spent more than a few hours on the farm since saving Carl's life. And Rick is thankful for him, for what he did, because his son is still alive and it's all because of Shane. But the Shane that went out to get the medicine is not the same Shane that came back that night.

  
When blood mixes with dirt, the result is a dark stain on the ground that looks similar to the shade _mahogany_ on the color wheel. Rick thinks that maybe not every color he sees is beautiful, because there are a few shades of red that still make his stomach churn.

  
The Walkers still look nearly the same now as they did when he woke up from his coma, though. The same grey skin, milky white eyes, and faded hair. The same blood dried on their skin, so dark it's almost black. Clothes covered in so much dust and dirt it's almost impossible to figure out what their original color was. It's interesting to think that while the beauty in the world has changed to full color, every shade of the rainbow and a few in between, the ugliness of it hasn't. Rick is glad, because while the color red has been all but ruined for him, he can still hold onto the others - to the purple button, the pink shell, and the tiny yellow pebble in his pocket.

  
\---

  
"I'm sorry," she says, and it sounds rehearsed. Like she's practiced it in the mirror a dozen times, making sure she's got it right. He wonders how many times she's tried to talk to him before now, how often she's lost her nerve, and when their relationship became so strained that they can't even apologize without it becoming a staged production.

  
 "There's no reason to be," he tells her, even though they both know that's not true. Lori's done a lot of things to hurt him, some of them intentional, some not, and there really isn't anything she can say to fix it. He wonders, in the back of his mind, what she sees when she looks at him - what she's seen since the beginning. Does she ever look at color wheels and search for his eyes? Did she fall in love with the way he looked when she first saw him in full color, or was it different with Shane because he was the first? Because he was her _soulmate_? Why did she marry him, if she knew he wasn't _the one_?

  
"There is. I shouldn't have held you back. I should have talked to him. He might have listened to me."

  
Rick shakes his head slowly, moving over to make room on the bed for her. She sits down gracefully on the edge, smoothing out the sheets around her, facing the wall opposite him. "He wouldn't have. He wasn't seeing sense. It would have taken a miracle to talk him down from that."

  
Her hand stills on the bed, her fingers resting between peaks of blanket. Her fingernails are trimmed but a couple are broken at odd angles, and she hasn't painted her nails in months. The old paint has chipped away, leaving the barest trace of pink behind.

  
"I could have done it." She looks over her shoulder at him, but only for a moment. "He's always listened to me. Even when I've said things he doesn't like."

  
_Like when you said you were marrying me_ , Rick thinks. Because he knows Shane, and he knows how important Lori is to him. Shane wouldn't have given up unless she told him to.

  
"Something's changed in him, Lori," Rick says. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, sitting on the side opposite his wife. They might as well be in different rooms. "I know you've seen it."

  
"Something's changed in you, too."

  
He freezes, not sure what to say. He's torn between lying about where he's been and what he's been doing, and telling her that she looks especially beautiful in blue. He wants to share that with her. He wants to spread the color wheel out between them and search for each other's eyes on it. He wants to tell her his favorite color, he wants her to know about Carol and the color lessons and Daryl and the little trinkets in his pocket. He wants to have someone he can talk to about the rainbow, and how the color red changes depending on where the blood is spilled, and how Beth's and Carl's and Daryl's eyes are all different shades of blue, but they're all beautiful. He wants her to look at the sky and tell him that she sees it in his eyes. He wants to share the colors with her without it being awkward, without judgement, with the person he's meant to see them with.

  
But, he realizes as soon as he thinks it, he already has. He's already found someone he can talk to about rainbows and blood and pretty blue eyes. And it doesn't matter that he's a man, or that they got off on the wrong foot, or that Lori is the person he married. Because he has a soulmate, and he can see colors, and Daryl doesn't tell him that his eyes are _blue_ , he says _azure_ , and he likes red even if it reminds him of blood, and he's the one who stood underneath the rainbow with Rick and waited with him until it faded away.

  
He should stop being jealous of what Lori has with Shane, even though he's not a part of it anymore, because he has it, too. She just doesn't know.

  
"Maybe," he says after a full minute of silence. He stares at the back of her shirt, at the _baby-blue_ fabric bunched up around her shoulders, and waits for her to look at him, but she doesn't. "But you have, too. We all have. Isn't that the way you wanted it? That's why you told me that the baby wasn't mine. You wouldn't have said anything if you didn't want me to know."

  
"I don't know if it's yours. It might be." She pauses, and he can hear her breathing from across the bed. "It doesn't matter. I love _you_ , Rick. I still do, you know."

  
"He's your soulmate, Lori. I don't want to come between that."

  
He wonders when he started wishing for the grey back, just so he wouldn't have to know. Because he's not stupid, he knows they've been seeing each other longer than she claims, he knows that the pull of being soulmates is hard for her to resist, and he knows that she loves Shane - maybe more than she loves Rick. And some part of him would rather be living in a grey world, still believing that his wife was in love with him, that their lives together were perfect even though they weren't, than in a colorful world full of monsters without Lori beside him.

  
"What about you?" she says, so quietly he can barely hear her. She's speaking into her lap, looking down at her legs dangling over the edge of the bed. "I don't want you to be alone."

  
"I'm not," he says before he can stop himself. He pauses, and contemplates telling her right here and now, but decides not to. "I have friends and family here. I'll be fine."

  
He's not sure if he'll ever be _fine_ , but he thinks maybe he will. Because Daryl will look at color wheels with him, and watch rainbows, and tell him what color his eyes are. Even if Lori won't.

  
She moves her shoulders in a half-shrug and stands up, and he expects to hear her leave. But instead her footsteps come closer, until she's standing right in front of him, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders like she's never stopped. And he expects it to feel different than it did in the field, when she was holding him back while Shane tore open the barn door and let a herd of Walkers out, but it doesn't. She's warm, and her arms are thin and plaint around his neck; he can feel her fingertips on his shoulder-blades, her breath against his ear, and the press of her thighs against his knees. She smells like soap and firewood and lake water. He knows the exact shade of her hair and her eyes and her skin, even the clothes she's wearing and the shoes on her feet. And he thinks that maybe she did look stunning dressed in head-to-toe red on the day she met Shane, but he'll never know. And maybe she was with him the first time she saw a rainbow, or bright green tree leaves, or red blood. But he never shared those things with her, and he can't take any of it back, and he's not sure he'd even want to.

  
Because the first rainbow he saw was _beautiful_ , and he got to share it with Daryl Dixon, and he thinks that might even be better.

  
\---

  
"Is he okay?"

  
Rick shrugs, glancing at the closed bedroom door. "Drank himself unconscious, but he'll be fine. I'm more worried about Beth, actually."

  
Daryl moves to sit next to him, close enough for their legs to tough, and Rick can't help but notice the striking difference between the way Daryl sits with him on the bed and the way Lori did last night.

  
Hershel disappeared sometime after they finished burning the bodies, and Rick found him in a bar of all places. Everyone has a different way of handling grief, and he understands, and he feels a spike of shame in his stomach on Shane's behalf. Because the Walkers in that barn were _people_ , too - Hershel's wife and son, and friends he held dear. Hershel was doing what he thought was best for his family, and Rick can't fault him for that, because that's what he was doing, too. It might have been what Shane was doing, but Rick's not sure anymore. He's only seen Shane once or twice since it happened, and the look in his eyes hasn't changed. It's like a beautiful blue sky going grey before a storm, and Rick wonders if the barn incident was the peak of it or if there's more to come.

  
"Hey," Daryl says, pushing his arm against Rick's. "Stop thinking so much. Doesn't make anything better."

  
Rick rolls his eyes. "Thanks."

  
"You know what I mean."

  
"Then," Rick says, glancing sideways at Daryl, "where do we go from here?"

  
He's not sure if he means the barn incident, or him and Daryl. Maybe both. So many things have happened, things that make his head spin just thinking about them, and all he wants is for the world to slow down for just a few minutes. Just so he can catch his breath. He could look at the color wheels with Daryl and point out colors they recognize; he could wash clothes with Carol and talk about Sophia and Carl and maybe even the baby Lori will be having; he could take Carl to see another deer and maybe tell him what it really looks like this time. He could wait for another rainbow, or talk to Beth about their favorite colors, or pick apart the shades of green in the forest. He could take a nap, and know that when he wakes up the world will be alright again.

  
Daryl opens his mouth, sighs, and closes it again just as quickly. Rick looks at him, watches the tentative smile fall from his face, and he's worried that he's said something wrong.

  
"I don't know," he says, knocking his knee against Rick's. He doesn't move for a long moment, and the steady pressure on Rick's leg is comforting; the room stops spinning for just a second, and all he can see is the chipping light blue paint on the wall by the window. _Periwinkle_ , he thinks. "We'll get through it. Always do."

  
Rick looks down and slides his hand onto Daryl's knee, holding it there for a full minute. He feels heat and soft denim jeans under his fingertips. He's not sure why he does it, but maybe Daryl needs steadying, too. He never thought to ask if the brunet's world is spinning, too caught up in his own. Daryl's leg stills under his hand and he stares at it, at the slightly splayed fingers tanned from the sun.

  
Rick can hear Daryl's breathing, slow and steady. From this distance, he can see tiny flecks of blond in his light brown hair. _Sepia_. He's close enough to touch, and Rick's hand itches for it, for the contact, the comfort, for a moment of silence. Daryl gave him rainbows and green grass and pretty blue eyes; Rick wishes he had something to offer in return.

  
After another minute, Daryl shifts and moves his own hand, resting it lightly on top of Rick's. It's warm and rough and makes Rick's chest feel light. It reminds him of yellow stones and pink shells and purple star-shaped buttons. And the crinkled paper full of lines in his pocket, and the infinite array of colors spread out on the laminated sheet in the top desk drawer by the bed. And rainbows, and green grass, and _cerulean_ eyes.

  
And Rick thinks that maybe something really has changed - with him and with Lori and with Daryl. He can see colors now, and he's still got Carl, and Lori, and now he has Daryl, too. And he figures that maybe they _will_ get through it, if he has all of that on his side.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rick starts to feel the feels. It's about damn time.

Rick falls asleep sometime in the early evening with Daryl by his side. And it should be weird, it should be awkward and uncomfortable, but it isn't. Daryl keeps his distance, but Rick is keenly aware of the times when their limbs brush during the night, and it makes his heart race so much he barely sleeps. And _that_ should be weird, too, but it isn't.

  
It's comfortable. The room is quiet and cool, the breeze from the open window glossing over the top of Rick's head and along the sheets. He didn't bother to change into pajamas, didn't think he'd end up sleeping like this. But he's tired, and the bed is warm and soft, and Daryl's breathing is just loud enough to keep time with his own, easy exhales and the rising and falling of his chest underneath the blankets.

  
But he can't sleep. His mind is racing, full of a tangle of thoughts that he can barely sort out. Lori and the baby, and how things are going to change between them now - is she going to go back to Shane, are they going to raise the baby together? Daryl and being soulmates - maybe there's something there, maybe there isn't, but Rick really wants to find out. But he's worried about what happened at the barn, the look in Shane's eyes, Hershel's drinking and Beth's depression and the deaths of so many people. He's terrified that everything is going to be taken away from him again. In the blink of an eye, they could all be gone - Lori and Carl and Shane and Daryl. And if Daryl left, so would the colors, and the rainbows, and the pretty blue eyes he's gotten so used to seeing every morning. And he would miss that so, so much.

  
So he lays awake most of the night, staring at the ceiling - chipping blue paint with white underneath, turned black in the darkness. The moonlight through the open window, turning the walls grey. Daryl's foot kicking against his lower leg, the blankets shifting as he moves, the sound of his breathing heavy in the air. And all Rick can think about is how much he has to lose, how fleeting life has become, and how terrified he is of every moment being the last of someone he loves.

  
He falls asleep sometime in the early hours of the morning, but it isn't peaceful. He can't remember what he dreams about, but he wakes up covered in cold sweat before the sun's even risen all the way, blankets tangled around his ankles and his hair stuck to his forehead. His eyes feel like they're full of sand, gritty and painful, and he rubs at them until he's certain they've turned red. It takes him a full minute to gather his thoughts enough to realize that he's alone, and he doesn't miss the pang of loneliness in his chest, but he does his best to ignore it. Because it's only been one night and a handful of mornings, and he really shouldn't be getting this used to having another person by his side. It's become too much of a habit, and Daryl isn't Lori, and he really needs to start telling himself that before he starts depending on the contact.

  
He sits up and looks around - at the mussed-up bed sheets next to him, the pillow thrown to the floor, the daylight streaming through the open window onto the bed and turning the wrinkled white blanket yellow, and the single flower laying on top of the nightstand on its side, turned towards the bed.

  
Rick blinks, rubs at his eyes once more, and stares at the object like he's never seen a flower before. It's orange - _tangerine_ , his mind supplies - with small brown spots on the inside and long, thin petals. On the rare occasions he's gone to the flower shop to buy a bouquet for Lori - anniversaries, birthdays, and once when she received an unexpected promotion at work - he's seen these flowers, but never bought them. He can't remember the name, but he could give a title to every color in the plant itself - from the bright orange petals to the green stem, _emerald_. He wonders for a moment if it was Lori who put it there, but then he realizes how stupid that thought is, because it's so obviously _Daryl_ , with his colorful little trinkets. Lori can't even tell him the color of his eyes, but _Daryl_ \- he could probably pick apart the exact shade of the flower's spots and find some significance in it for Rick. Like the tree he and Carol sat under when she taught him about the colors, or the deer Carl was looking at when he was shot; Lori wouldn't know those things. And it should probably bother Rick that the first things he thought of when he pictured the color _brown_ were the tree in the Atlanta campsite and the deer in the woods and not Lori's eyes, but for some reason it really doesn't.

  
The door opens, creaking on its hinges, and Daryl steps inside of the room, dressed in a dark blue shirt and matching jeans and holding a fluffy white towel over his wet mop of hair. Rick can smell him from across the room - the fresh soap from the shower and the strawberry-scented shampoo that Rick is pretty sure is Maggie's. There's water dripping down the sides of his face and Rick wonders when the last time he saw Daryl this _clean_ was - probably after the last rain, when they saw their first rainbow. His hair is still darker when it's wet, almost the same color as the spots on the flower, and he's wearing his dulled red socks pulled up over the hem of his jeans.

  
"Hi," Daryl says, stepping into the room and rubbing the towel over his head.

  
"Hey." Rick gestures towards the nightstand, moving over to make room on the bed for Daryl. "This yours?"

  
Daryl gives him a half-nod, sitting down on the end of the bed by Rick's feet. "It's for you, it's a Tiger Lily. Orange, like the fire. Looked it up this morning; I think it looks kind of like _monarch orange_ , from the chart. But I figured I'd ask you."

  
Rick shrugs, smiling as Daryl sits and wraps the towel around his neck. "I thought maybe _tangerine_. But they're pretty similar, right? I've been trying to figure out the colors of the other stuff you gave me, too. I think I've gotten pretty close."

  
Daryl narrows his eyes, and a look of confusion passes over them. "What other stuff?"

  
Rick sits up, pushing the blanket off of his lower legs, and shifts until he can reach his deep enough into his pocket to pull out his trinkets. A purple star-shaped button, a pink shell with white spikes on the back, and a tiny yellow pebble with a crack down the middle. He lays them out on the bed between them, moving them around until he's satisfied with their layout. A second later he reaches into his other pocket and removes the crinkled piece of paper, which is stained with dirt and torn in one corner, and sets it next to the small treasures. Daryl watches him, forehead creased, and he stares at the objects for a full minute before looking back up at Rick.

  
"You... you kept those?" His voice is small, raspy as usual, and Rick can't quite tell what he's thinking. He could be angry, or sad, or happy, or maybe just confused. He puts his hand out and touches the pebble first, running his fingertips along it like it's fragile, like one wrong move will deepen the crack until it's broken completely in half. He touches the spikes on the shell, then the points on the button, and finally rests his hand palm-down on the folded paper, right next to Rick's knee. His fingers tap on the color _orange_ , just like the flower, but maybe a shade or two darker.

  
"Yeah," Rick says, watching his hand. He kind of wishes it would move just an inch to the right, onto his knee or maybe his thigh, but it doesn't. "Why wouldn't I? They're the first colors we learned. They're important."

  
"It's just stuff I found in the woods. At the Atlanta camp. You could have thrown it and I wouldn't have known."

  
"Yeah, but _I_ would have. And it's nice. I like having them around. Can't do that with the flower, though."

  
Rick frowns, glancing between the trinkets on the bed and the flower on the nightstand. He _could_ try to fit it into his pocket, but it might stick out a little, and it would certainly wilt without water for a few days. It would fall apart. He wishes he had a book or something to press it into, even though it's just a common flower he could find any day if he wanted a new one, because it's a _gift_ and it's orange and brown and green, and it's from Daryl, and he doesn't want to just _throw_ it away.

  
Daryl rolls his eyes, but there's a small smile curling up the corners of his mouth. "You're a hoarder."

  
"Am not. I just like nice things."

  
Daryl points at the pebble, with its rough edges and dark brown crack. "That's a _rock_. I could have found you a nicer one, even. This one's broken."

  
"It's still in one piece. And it's the first color you asked me about. Remember that?"

  
"How could I forget?"

  
Rick grins, picturing the moment in his head. Daryl hadn't even wanted to be around him, back then. He'd hated so much that he'd had to ask Rick about the colors, and he'd left the pebble with him, probably on accident. But Rick had kept it, even if Daryl didn't mean for him to, and it had meant something. It still does. Lori has bought him expensive watches, and new slacks, and shiny black shoes with thin laces, but she's never given him _colors_. Daryl gave him yellow, and pink, and purple, and orange - and every color in between. Daryl gave him the first rainbow he ever saw, and the brown deer in the woods, and the yellow-green grass outside of the farm. And that's more important than a silly little rock, or a spiky shell, or a piece of star-shaped plastic. Or a common flower with little brown spots on the petals.

  
And he feels something, something he hasn't felt in years. He wonders if Shane felt the same way the first time he saw Lori, in her pretty red dress and heels, so full of color and life and beauty that it was almost too much to bear. Because Rick has searched all throughout the farm, the camp, in the woods and in every place they scavenge through, and he still hasn't found a shade of blue that can compete with Daryl's eyes.

  
"We've come a long way since then," Daryl says, removing his hand from the paper and resting it with his other one in his lap. He smiles, and it's a little sad, and it doesn't reach his eyes.

  
Rick wants to touch him, to pull him back down onto the bed and sleep the day away. He wants to feel his warm hands, trace the callouses on his rough fingers, feel the softness of his just-washed hair and his feet on Rick's calves under the blanket. He wants Daryl to hold him, to see if it feels the same as it did with Lori or if something's changed. Because he feels like maybe something has.

  
"Yeah. We have."

  
\---

  
"What's it like? With Maggie?"

  
Glenn stares at him, glances around for a moment, and pulls a chair out to sit. Everyone else is outside; they're alone in the dining room, and this is the first time Rick's actually managed to hold a conversation with Glenn since he found out about Lori's pregnancy. Glenn looks nervous, but Rick isn't here to talk about Lori.

  
"Um. What do you mean?"

  
Rick shrugs, sitting down facing Glenn with his chair pulled out from the table a few inches. "Colors, mostly. What's it like seeing them? And how did you know she's _the one_?"

  
Glenn looks confused, pulling at his fingers in his lap. "She's my _soulmate_ , man. That's enough, isn't it?"

  
Rick wants to agree, because that's what soulmates are, right? The world's way of telling someone that they've found the person they're meant to spend the rest of their life with. But then he thinks about Daryl, and he's not so sure. Because he spent the second half of his life believing that Lori was his soulmate, colors or not, and it's confusing to think that there's a possibility that it could be someone else.

  
"Yeah, but let's say you didn't _know_ , right? You saw colors but you still weren't sure she's the person you're supposed to be with. So, then, how would you figure that out?"

  
Glenn frowns, looking back and forth between Rick and the open window behind him. "I don't know? You're married, dude. You should know what that's like. You fall in _love_. Aren't you and Lori soulmates?"

  
Rick is tempted to lie, because he's not sure if Lori wants anyone else to know about her and Shane, and he certainly doesn't want anyone finding out about him and Daryl. But he can't ask Carol or Hershel, and Beth has been confined to her room for the past three days. And he really needs to know, because he's starting to feel uncomfortable every time Daryl goes hunting, or goes to sleep in his tent, or even just takes a _bathroom break_. It's like someone has stolen the treasures out of his pocket and he can't feel them anymore, pressing comfortably against his thigh, and he's lost without that feeling. But he's not sure if it's because Daryl is his _soulmate_ , or something else entirely, and it's really starting to bother him.

  
"No," he says, deciding that it won't hurt to tell Glenn that much, as long as Shane and Daryl are left out of it. "We never were. We married for love, and I thought that was enough, but now I'm not so sure."

  
"You're not sure if you _love_ her?"

  
Rick runs his hand through his hair and rubs at his forehead with his fingertips, feeling a headache coming on. "Of course I love her. But, let's say one of us meets our soulmate, right? How are we supposed to know if that's enough?"

  
Glenn scratches at a spot on his neck and shrugs his shoulders, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "I don't know, I think you just _know_ , man. Soulmates aren't something you can compete with. Seeing Maggie for the first time, and everything in full color, it was the most amazing thing that's ever happened to me. It was like nothing before I met her mattered, because it was all grey, and I've seen plenty of girls since then, but I'll never forget the first time I saw her."

  
_Blue_ , Rick thinks; like the sky and the sea and Daryl Dixon's eyes. It always comes down to that color. Because he didn't really think anything the first time he met Lori, besides how wavy her hair was and how pretty the colorless pattern on her shirt was, but everything about Daryl is filled with color. From his messy brown hair to his dingy red socks, to the little treasures in Rick's pocket.

  
Rick runs his hand down his face and pinches the skin along his temple. He's not gay, and he loves Lori, even if she doesn't love him back. He's got a family, and a life, and he was perfectly fine with a grey world before Daryl came along. And now he wouldn't trade it for anything, and it's so confusing it makes his chest ache.

  
"This is all hypothetical, right?" Glenn asks, clearing his throat softly.

  
"Yeah, of course. I just..." Rick pauses, not quite sure what to say. He settles on the truth, or at least, part of it. "I just want that, you know? I never thought I'd want anything more than Lori, and I figured I'd be okay with never finding my soulmate because I had her. But now I just want to know what it's like. I want what you and Maggie have. And I don't know if that's ever going to happen for me."

  
"It'll happen, alright? If you don't think Lori's the one, then that's okay, because that just means there's still someone out there who's _made_ for you. And that's the best feeling in the world. You've just gotta wait for it."

  
_That's the problem_ , Rick thinks to himself, glancing back behind himself at the chipping paint on the window sill. _I think I've already found it_.

  
\---

  
Rick pulls the crinkled paper out of his pocket, unfolding it on the nightstand by the bed. It's started to fade a little, covered in blotches of dried dirt that falls to the floor when he shakes it and torn in one corner. He names the colors in his head without looking at the neat cursive scrawled underneath each line - yellow, orange, red, green, brown, blue, pink, purple.

  
He carefully pulls a single petal off of the orange flower; it's silky and smooth, fragile like a butterfly's wings, and it nearly falls apart in his fingers. The petal is uneven, long and curved at the end, with tiny brown spots towards the center. He lays it gently in the middle of the piece of paper and folds it back up again, careful not to crease the petal, and then pushes it back into his pocket. It fills the entire space, poking out a bit on top, and he can hear it crinkle when he moves.

  
He sets the rest of the flower in a cup of water by the bed, facing the low sunlight filtering through the window. And he wonders when his entire life became so dependent on Daryl Dixon. He thinks, maybe, it's been since the start - since the first time he saw those dark blue eyes. And maybe Glenn was right; maybe _soulmates_ really are enough.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I am aware that Daryl has a thing for Cherokee Roses, but that's between him and Carol. I figured he'd have a different flower for Rick, and Tiger Lilies are my favorite, so. There ya go. You're learning all sorts of fun things about me lately. 
> 
> Also this chapter is definitely not my favorite. Not a whole lot of plot advancing here. We're going somewhere with this, I swear :)


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here ya go. Sorry for the wait. Chapters are slow-going as RL is a bit complicated lately, but I'm working on it. Next one will be a doozy, so watch out for it.

Rick wakes up the next morning without Daryl by his side - and he's not surprised, because Daryl has never stayed through the morning with him. But what does surprise him, however, is Lori, sitting next to him on the bed, with the laminated sheet of color wheels half-opened in her lap.

  
He hears the paper crinkle as she moves it, and he turns and sees her eyes glancing back and forth on the page, her forehead creased and her lips drawn into a thin line. She's sitting on the end of the bed farthest from Rick, with her legs dangling over the edge, wearing white shorts and a light pink shirt that almost blends in with her skin tone.

  
"When were you going to tell me?" she asks, gripping the edges of the paper tightly enough to tear.

  
Part of him wants to tell her the truth, because then maybe their relationship can be saved. He wants to think that they can still have the things soulmates do; they can still watch rainbows together, and pick apart colors, and he can give her flowers and sit in the grass with her and they can argue over which shade of orange a Tiger Lily is. But then he realizes that he isn't even sure if he _wants_ things to be that way for them. Daryl is the one who gave him the flower, and the rainbow, and every single color on the sheet of paper in Lori's lap. _Daryl_ is his soulmate, and no matter how badly he wants it to be Lori, it isn't.

  
"Tell you what?" he says, pulling himself into a sitting position with his legs still underneath the blanket. "That's not mine. This room belongs to Hershel; it's probably his."

  
Lori shakes her head slowly, her frown deepening and creating lines on her cheeks and by her eyes that age her in seconds. She holds out her hand silently and uncurls her fingers; laying on her palm are three small objects, clustered together - a star-shaped purple button, a pink-and-white shell, and a tiny yellow pebble with a crack running through it. Rick notices, for the first time, that there's a second piece of paper on top of the laminated sheet in front of her. The paper Carol wrote the colors on, with a withering flower petal still sitting in the center.

  
"You went through my things?" he asks, anger flaring up in his chest. He feels nauseous, watching her holding his treasures like they're nothing, like they're just pieces of garbage she found in his pocket. He wants to take them from her, and the papers in her lap, and tuck them back into his jeans where nobody else can get to them.

  
"I came in to get your laundry. Your jeans were on the floor, and I felt something in your pockets when I picked them up. Going through your dresser wasn't my intention, but I saw the flower and I..." She trails off, her voice getting quieter with every word until her mouth moves but no noise comes out. He shakes his head and extends his hand, palm up, waiting for her to give him back his items, but she doesn't. She looks down at them like she's never seen buttons or shells or rocks before, like she's looking for a meaning in them that isn't there.

  
"You had no right to go through my things without my permission," he spits out, trying to keep his temper under control. This is _Lori_ , and she's his wife and he loves her. But right now, just the same as when she told him she was pregnant with a baby that might not be his, he doesn't want to see her. He wants her to disappear, and come back bright and shiny and new so that he can love her again. He wants to go back to the time after he started seeing colors, but before he knew she could, too - when she was still beautiful, the prettiest person he'd ever seen, and all he wanted to do was share this new world with her. Now he doesn't even know what he wants.

  
" _You_ had no right to lie to me about something like this!"

  
He barks out a laugh that sounds more like a cough and looks at her, but her eyes are still fixed on her lap, on the color wheels for _orange_ and _red_ and _yellow_ displayed on the top of the paper. "You lied to me about it for how many years? And you were in love with your soulmate, you were screwing him behind my back, and I don't feel a thing for mine because I still love you!"

  
He knows as soon as he's said it that it's not true. Because if he had the choice, he'd still be sleeping next to Daryl right now, with the brunet's feet pressed against his calves, instead of sitting here with Lori, his _wife_. And he wonders when that changed, like flipping a switch, and if there's ever a chance of changing it back again. After all that's happened, he doesn't think there is, and that should really hurt him more than it does.

  
"Who is it?" she asks, and she sounds more curious than angry. "Is it Andrea? Jacqui? Oh, God, it's not _Beth_ , is it?"

  
He wrinkles his nose and shakes his head quickly. "Beth's got a soulmate. Jimmy. And she's _sixteen_."

  
"I don't think it matters. It's someone here, isn't it? Or did you meet them before we got here, before the Walkers and the coma and everything else?"

  
"I don't want to talk about this, Lori," he says, playing with the hem of the blanket pulled up to his chest. "Nothing's going to come of it, so it doesn't matter. We can both see colors, and that should be amazing, right? Can't we just leave it at that?"

  
She shakes her head, and his chest feels like it's deflating, his lungs running out of air. "I want to know. It wasn't Amy, was it? Because you've got this stuff _here_ , and you'd be seeing grey now if it was her. Like Carol and Hershel."

  
"Carol told you about that?"

  
"It's obvious, Ed was her soulmate. That's why she stayed with him even when he beat her, right? And she's been quiet since he died." She pauses, running one finger over the red color wheel and stopping on _crimson_. "I didn't know about any of this. Shane never wanted to talk about colors, and it took me years to learn them all. I'm still not sure I've got them right."

  
Rick nods at the paper. "You can borrow it, if you want. I've got most of it memorized, anyway."

  
"How long have you known?"

  
"You know I can't tell you that." Because it would be too obvious. He's known since he met Daryl, between arriving at the Atlanta camp and leaving for the farm. And for some reason he really doesn't want Lori to know about Daryl. He's not sure if it's because Daryl is a man, or if he's ashamed to admit that he has a soulmate at all, to say it out loud. To end their marriage with finality, because now that they've both found their soulmates, there's no point in pretending everything is perfectly grey anymore.

  
Lori hums and unfolds another section of paper, eyes down and roaming across the page. One hand still holds Rick's trinkets, clicking together in the pit of her palm, and the other circles the paper and lands on the blue wheel, underneath the color _sapphire_.

  
"You asked me what color your eyes were, before. I think this is pretty close."

  
Rick leans closer and looks down at the color. It's very similar to _azure_ , but a bit darker, more like the sky just before the sun sets than on a sunny afternoon. He's not sure which answer is correct, but he knows Daryl put a lot more thought into it than Lori. His eyes land on _cerulean_ and his pulse jumps a beat.

  
He wants to tell Lori that he knows the exact shade of her eyes, too - and her clothes, and shoes, and pretty dangly earrings. And her hair, and skin, and the tiny little freckles dotting her arms and the bridge of her nose. But he doesn't.

  
Lori sighs and sets the small trinkets down on the blanket between them, and then folds up the first piece of paper - the one Carol made for Rick, with the lines and colors written underneath them - with the petal in the center. She sets it aside with the rest of his things and takes one last long look at the color wheels before she folds that paper too and places it with the other one.

  
"I tried to get rid of it," she says, suddenly and without context, one hand immediately going to rest on her flat stomach. "I took a pill, because I thought then maybe things could go back to normal. To the way they were before this all happened. But I threw it back up because I just _couldn't_ do it, and I don't know where that leaves us, but I want you to know that I really am sorry. I never meant to hurt you."

  
Rick looks up at her, at her wide brown eyes and quivering lip, and he feels nothing but pity, and maybe a little bit of shame. Because this whole time, she's been fighting for him, and she shouldn't have had to. He's never been her soulmate.

  
"It's okay." He scoots a few inches closer and pulls her in for a sideways hug, one arm around her shoulders. It feels the same as it did outside of the barn - warm and pliant, but nothing like it used to, back when they were puzzle pieces that fit together perfectly. Now they're more like strangers. "You should keep it. It's _your_ baby. Doesn't matter who else's it is. But if you want it to be his, then I understand."

  
She doesn't say anything, but he doesn't expect her to. And he's glad he doesn't have an answer, because he's not sure which one he'd like better. Part of him, a small part, wants her to be with Shane, and he's not sure when he started thinking like that. Or why Daryl Dixon pops up in his mind when he does.

  
\---

  
Beth tries to kill herself a day later. Rick is outside with Daryl, and he only learns about it through listening to others talking - Andrea and Maggie fighting, Lori whispering to Shane about it on the rare occasion he's staying in camp for the night, Hershel and Maggie talking, in whispers, on the bench on the porch in passing.

  
She slit her wrist - just one - and Rick can't help but picture it. The red blood, her fair skin, the bathroom floor painted _crimson_. Just like the color Lori pointed to on the wheel. He hears that she did it with a shard of mirror, broken off from the wall, and that it wasn't deep enough to do any serious damage. Not even in the right direction, and he knows, because he's been trained in the academy to recognize a suicide attempt. And he honestly doesn't believe that Beth wanted to die.

  
But he can understand it, really. She just lost her mother and brother a second time, and Hershel's been on the mend ever since. Maggie has Glenn, and even though Jimmy is her soulmate, Rick's never seen much chemistry between the two of them. Maybe they're too young, or maybe soulmates don't work the way Rick always imagined they did. He always pictured a spark, butterflies and electricity and _magic_. And then everything bursts into color, and it's perfect, and nothing in the world can ever be better. But Carol's soulmate beat her, and Lori still chose Rick over Shane for _years_. And Hershel got remarried, so did Morales's wife, and the only sign Rick has that soulmates even mean anything anymore is Maggie and Glenn, and he doesn't know what goes on behind closed doors.

  
He doesn't see Beth for days, and then it's like flipping a switch, and suddenly he sees her everywhere. In the house, making lunch for everyone, outside picking weeds and pruning flowers, bringing water up from the wells and feeding the horses. She smiles at Maggie and Glenn, kisses Jimmy, and even has a full conversation with Carl that leaves the boy grinning from ear to ear. It's like nothing was ever wrong, and the only evidence that it was is the thick bandage rolled around her wrist, dotted with dried blood. And she doesn't even try to hide it behind long sleeves and bracelets.

  
The day after it happens he visits her room. The door is closed but not locked, and he can hear voices from inside. One voice, mostly - Maggie. Her voice is raised enough that he could hear her if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He just sneaks up to the door, hears a choked-off sob from inside that's distinctly not Beth, and leaves a small plastic cup on the floor outside. With a slightly wilted orange flower inside, missing one petal. He hopes she understands.

  
\---

  
It starts out like any other hunting trip - Daryl leaves early in the morning with his crossbow on one shoulder and his knife strapped to his side, and promises he'll be back by lunch time with a full string of squirrels and hopefully a deer. And Rick waits for him, wasting time doing chores around the farm and chatting with the others, even Lori. And he watches. He watches Glenn and Maggie holding hands in the back of the yard by the tents; he watches Carl and Sophia sitting almost too close by the RV, drawing with colorless markets on a piece of paper. He watches Carol hanging clothes up to dry and offers her a smile when she looks his way. He watches Beth, picking at her bandages with her hair over one shoulder and a string of blue beads around her neck. He watches Shane, cleaning his gun for the tenth time since this morning, his eyes narrowed and his head low.

  
And he thinks about what these people mean to him. How they've become his family, his entire existence, in just a short amount of time. How terrified he is to lose one of them. How willing he would be to let Lori and Shane be, if it would make them happy even just for a little while.

  
And then lunch time passes. Carol divides half a dozen cans of peaches and beans out to the group, and they eat around an ashy fire pit on dry yellow-green grass, and Rick spends the entire time looking into the woods, waiting. He expects Daryl to walk back onto the farm any minute, with his kills strung around his neck and his crossbow resting on one shoulder. He'll be covered in dirt, and maybe a little blood, and his hair will be stuck to his forehead with sweat. His clothes might be torn, or filthy at least, but Rick will still put his hand on the brunet's shoulder. He'll still sit with his knees touching Daryl's on the dirt while they clean squirrels and rabbits and maybe a bird or two. And tonight, in bed with the lights out, he might just be daring enough to bump their shoulders together, brush his feet against Daryl's leg, and settle in close enough to feel his breath on Rick's neck.

  
But none of that will happen if Daryl never makes it back, and once he's two hours late Rick really starts to worry.

  
Three hours, and he finds himself standing on the edge of the woods, peering into the thick trees and trying to talk himself out of wandering inside. It wouldn't do Daryl any good if Rick got lost in the woods. Rick needs to be here, at the farm, when Daryl gets back.

  
At hour four, Rick tries striking up a conversation with Carol, figuring it's better than just standing around waiting. He comments on her shirt - a light red with a swirly design on it in black - before he remembers that she probably doesn't know what it looks like anymore. He wonders how much she remembers about colors; can she see them in her mind, when she closes her eyes, or are they lost to her now? Could she explain what they look like, or has Ed's death rendered everything in her life grey? Thinking about it makes his chest ache, so he quickly excuses himself and goes back to his post standing by the trees.

  
It's nearly supper time, and Daryl still isn't back, and Rick is too worried to eat anything. His stomach feels like it's knotted up, the air is starting to get cooler like it might rain, and Rick really hopes Daryl is back before that.

  
Rick goes back into the house at hour five, uses the bathroom and washes his hands, and takes a long look in the mirror. He's seen himself plenty of times since his life became colorful, but he's never really _looked_. His eyes are blue and his hair is black, and his skin is a light flesh-tone that's somewhere between _tan_ and _beige_. There are lines on his cheeks and forehead and around his eyes that he swears weren't there before his coma, a few nicks on his chin from shaving, and his teeth could definitely be whiter. His hair is starting to curl in the back from the humidity, and he smoothes it down with one hand and a bit of water, throwing some on his face as well before turning off the tap. He feels older, somehow. He feels like he's wasted half of his life, but he's not sure on what. 

 

He hears a shout from across the yard when he opens the front screen door and it takes him all of a few seconds to spot a Walker, coming out of the woods and in the direction of the house. He can't see it well from so far away, but it's hobbling, leaning heavily on one leg. He pulls his gun out of its holster and holds it up, walking towards the creature, and he narrows his eyes the closer he gets because something just seems _off_ about it. Maybe it's the almost human way it's walking, or the tone of its skin, the fact that it looks just a bit too colorful to be dead. It's not until he's halfway across the yard that he realizes that's because it _isn't_ dead, it's just a human in tattered clothes with blood and dirt on their face and a limp in their walk. A few more feet and he recognizes Daryl Dixon, covered in filth with a makeshift bandage in his side, clearly worse for wear. But the thrill he feels at having his friend, his _soulmate_ , finally home is short-lived.

  
Because he's not even ten feet away from Daryl when a shot rings out, whipping through the air to his left, and Daryl goes down a second later. There's not even a moment of fight, one minute he's walking unsteadily towards Rick, the ghost of a smile curling up the corner of his mouth, and the next he's on the ground, blood streaming out of a wound in his head, too close, too close, and Rick throws himself on top of the brunet without even thinking about it.

  
His hands are bloody. He searches for an exit wound, but doesn't dare lift Daryl's head. There's so much _blood_ , it's thick and red and sticks to the grass like dew. Daryl's eyes are closed, but he's still breathing, and just to make sure Rick puts his head to Daryl's chest and waits, counts out ten uneven breaths and feels under his nose with his fingers. His heart is beating so fast it feels like his chest is going to burst, and someone is shouting in the distance, but all he can hear is his own pulse in his ears.

  
Daryl's dark grey shirt is in tatters, torn at the waist and ripped across both shoulders. And Rick swears Daryl was wearing blue this morning, he greeted Rick outside by the camp fire before he left, and Rick knows his shirt was _navy blue_ because he commented on it, on the color he found on the laminated sheet of paper by his bed.

  
Rick looks up at Daryl's face, at the stark whiteness of it, his sandy brown hair turning grey, and. Grey. And the blood coming out of the wound on one side of his forehead is dark, almost black, but if Rick looks closely it's more grey than red. He moves his hand in the grass and suddenly that's grey, too - light, almost white, but definitely not green.

  
Rick fights the sickness pooling in his stomach and looks up, into the forest and around the farm. He sees Glenn running towards him - dressed in all grey. The large painted barn - grey. The trees, their trunks and their leaves - all grey.

  
Everything desaturates before his eyes, and in an instant everything around him turns grey.


	14. Chapter 14

He should be used to it; he really should. He spent most of his life seeing grey, and he always told himself that things could be worse. His life in grey wasn't _bad_ , it was just fine - nothing like seeing colors, but he had a son and a wife and a good life. And there was even a time when he found himself wishing that things could go back to being grey, if only so that he could take back the things that happened after the colors arrived - finding out about Lori's cheating and the baby, waking up in a world full of Walkers and having to fight for his life and the lives of the people he loves every day, losing so many friends along the way. But that kind of grey was different, because he didn't know anything else. He didn't know how beautiful a rainbow is, or the different shades of green in the forest, or how pretty blue eyes can be. And now that he knows, he doesn't want to let it go. And he really, really doesn't want to let Daryl Dixon go.

  
Everything sort of feels like it's underwater. There's a pounding in his ears that makes it hard to hear what everyone around him is saying, and his head feels like it's filled with pressure, like it's going to explode any moment. When he moves, everything is in slow motion, and he has to fight to stay upright even when a group of people come to take Daryl away; he can't pry his eyes away from the dark grey blood stain on the grass, so he doesn't see who they are, but a pair of _pewter_ boots stops by his hand and then suddenly Daryl is gone, lifted up and carried away, and Rick is left alone.

  
There's more blood than he expected. He's not sure if that's normal in these kinds of injuries. He should know, he's a cop, and he's seen more than his fair share of head wounds. But he can't remember any of them being this traumatic, and even if he still had his uniform on and was on the clock, he still wouldn't be able to force himself to move. The sudden shock of grey, and knowing what that means... It hits him like a punch to the stomach and he can't even sit up straight, everything hurts and the world is spinning like it did when he first saw colors and when Shane released the group of Walkers from the barn. But now he doesn't have Daryl's hand on his shoulder to steady him, and he feels like if he tries to stand up everything will just fall apart.

  
He never thought that losing Daryl Dixon would be this hard. And it's not because he didn't expect it, because even if it had been _cancer_ or something like that, he still would feel the same. When he first met him, Rick didn't know what to think. Daryl was hard to get to know, and he honestly didn't want to; he had Lori, and that was enough. He doesn't know when it stopped being enough, but it has, and now all he wants is his soulmate back.

  
He hears the crunching of dry grass like television static in his ears and a pair of feet wearing light grey sandals stops by the blood-stained grass. Someone pulls him up by his arm and he sways, holding onto the offered hand like a lifeline. In the back of his mind, he thinks it's Daryl, because Daryl is always there when he needs him, but then he remembers that Daryl doesn't wear sandals, and there are no red socks pulled up past the hem of jeans, and Rick wouldn't even know if there was because he can't see red anymore, not even in the blood, and a thought sticks in his head and won't go away. He can feel the little trinkets pressing into his leg from the inside of his pocket, and he's terrified that the next time he takes them out they'll have lost their colors.

  
Rick is pulled away from the bloody field and towards the house; he can see the line of trees getting smaller behind him, until they're just blobs of grey with no real form. He drags his feet through the grass, forces his head up as far as he can, and sees the shadow of Lori's hair falling over her shoulder, her dark grey eyes and light grey shirt and ashy grey skin. She's pretty, just like she was when he first met her, but now that he knows how beautiful she can be, it's like he's looking at the wrong person. This isn't his wife, with her brown eyes and pale skin and pink blouse. She looks like a Walker, grey from head to toe, and if she wasn't holding him up by his arm and guiding him gently towards the house, he might think she was.

  
He stumbles over a knot in the grass and she barely catches him, holding him a foot above the ground, but he sinks like a dead weight in her arms.

  
"Come on, Rick," she whispers, close enough to his ear that he can hear her over the white noise. "You've got to work with me here. He's not going to get any better with you out here alone. We're almost there, just a few more feet."

  
Rick is barely aware that he's shaking his head, a wave of dizziness washing over him at the sudden movement. He doesn't want to move. He doesn't want to go inside and see Daryl's dead body lying on a bed, Hershel and the others trying their best to save him, but they won't be able to. Because he's gone. Rick knows it as certainly as anything, because the colors have been drained from his life, and that can only mean one thing. And he doesn't want to see it. He wants them to take Daryl outside, through the back door, and bury him where Rick can't see. Because then maybe he can just pretend to himself that Daryl is still out hunting, he'll be back in a couple of hours, everything is fine. And it doesn't matter that everything is grey - watching the life leave Daryl's eyes will be just as painful in any color. Maybe more now, because he knows he'll never see that same exact shade of _cerulean_ again.

  
"Rick?" Lori says again, raising her voice a bit. She tugs on his arm but he doesn't budge. He just needs a minute to catch his breath, to wait for the world to stop spinning and for the others to bring Daryl's body out of the house. Just a minute. "Rick, what are you seeing right now? Can you tell me?"

  
She's talking to him like she would speak to a child, like she talked to Carl when he was a toddler always on the brink of tears. Like he's a time-bomb about to go off, and she's trying to keep him from exploding. He wants to argue that he's not that sensitive, that things worse than this have happened to him and he's been just fine, but he's not sure if that's true. Because, right now, all he can think of is what he stands to lose.

  
It's not just Daryl, either. Rick will lose him, of course, and that's crushing enough, but he'll also lose all of the beauty he's found in the world since he met the brunet. He'll lose rainbows and brown deer and blue skies, and yellow pebbles and pink shells and purple star-shaped buttons and bright orange flowers with brown spots on their petals. The sheet of paper in his pocket will turn grey, and so will the laminated color wheels in the drawer by his bed. It'll be like watching the world die all over again; the beauty will all turn back into ugliness. And what, then? How is he supposed to cope with so much loss?

  
"Grey," he finally croaks out, after at least a minute's silence. His voice sounds raspy and strained, like he hasn't had a drink in days, and he's not even sure why he's telling Lori the truth now. But it's not like it matters anymore. "It's all grey."

  
Rick doesn't look up at Lori, doesn't want to see the look on her face. He knows she'll be shocked, confused, maybe a little angry, even. He doesn't want to see her right now at all, with her grey hair and grey eyes and grey skin. He wishes she would just go inside with the others, and maybe come back for him later. Once Daryl is gone and it's safe for Rick to open his eyes again.

  
But she doesn't leave his side. And she doesn't say anything. And if he keeps his eyes closed, he can almost see a flicker of color behind his lids, a flash of blue he's committed to memory. So he does, and he focuses on that and Lori's hand on his back, and he almost forgets. Almost.

  
\---

  
Rick isn't sure how much time has passed between Andrea accidentally shooting Daryl - and her numerous apologies, all going through Rick's ears without really being digested - and Hershel finally coming out of the house. Rick keeps his eyes closed the entire time, and eventually Lori leaves him, but it takes him at least half an hour to even notice. The air feels colder, like it might rain, or maybe it's just getting later. It could be midnight and Rick wouldn't even know.

  
He doesn't open his eyes until he hears Hershel stop right in front of him and clear his throat, and even then it takes everything Rick has in him to force his eyes up to the veterinarian's face. Because this is the second time he's put his faith in this man's hands, and he knows what the outcome will be this time. _I'm sorry, but..._ And then Rick will have to face the truth. With his eyes open. Because he was a second too late, and he should have just gone into the woods looking for Daryl after the first hour passed, or maybe he should have just taken the bullet in his place.

  
The first thing he sees is Hershel's hands, and they're covered in blood. He's wiping them off with a rag, but it's spreading, underneath his fingernails and in the creases in his palms, and for a moment everything freezes. Rick stares at Hershel's hands, dimly aware that the doctor is saying something to him, but his pulse is too loud in his ears. And he can't think, and he wants to rub his eyes to make sure what he's seeing is real, but he can't, because he's afraid the illusion might shatter if he does. So he keeps them open, wide, and stares until he's _sure_.

  
Because the blood on Hershel's hands is bright red, and it's Daryl's, and Daryl is _alive_.

  
Watching the colors fade back into existence is even more magical than seeing them the first time was. He looks around, spinning his head so quickly his neck hurts, and takes it all in - the red barn in the distance, the green grass under his legs, his own red shirt and blue jeans and lightly tanned skin. He sits up and digs his hand in his pocket, pulling out his treasures and silently taking inventory. Yellow, pink, purple. A crinkled sheet of paper with a bright orange petal folded up in the center. He holds them all in his palms and finally dares to blink, letting the image settle in behind his eyelids before he opens his eyes again, and they're still there. Still colorful. And he wants to scream and cheer and jump and pray all at once, but instead he just pulls himself to his feet, replaces his trinkets in his pockets, and throws his arms around Hershel's shoulders before he has a chance to stop himself.

  
"Thank you," he says, his voice still raspy. "Thank you so, so much."

  
Rick hears Hershel huff out a laugh like a sigh and feels a strong pat of a hand on his back. "Your wife told me you'd probably react like this. I thought she might have been leading me on, but I guess not."

  
In that moment, Rick doesn't care that Hershel knows that Daryl is his soulmate. He doesn't even care that Lori knows. She can tell Shane, and Carl, and everyone else if she wants to. It doesn't matter, because Daryl is alive and the colors are back and everything is so, so perfect for the middle of the apocalypse.

  
It's perfect for any day, really. Maybe even better than his life before, because he still has everything he's ever wanted, and now he has Daryl, too.

  
\---

  
It's sometime around one in the morning by the time Rick is given the okay to visit Daryl. And, as predicted, Daryl is fast asleep. Rick worries for a moment that he's gone, he's too still and his face is so pale it's nearly white, but then he sees the dark red spots seeping through the large bandage around his forehead, the blue bedsheets, and sandy brown hair resting on top of the pillow at the head of the bed. And, just to be sure, Rick lays his head on Daryl's chest and listens for a heartbeat. It's steady and strong, and it makes his own heart beat just a little faster.

  
Daryl is laying on his back with his eyes closed and a single bedsheet pulled up to the middle of his chest. He looks peaceful, probably calmer than Rick has ever seen him. Rick tries to ignore the blood stains peeking out from underneath his shoulders, a spot or two on the carpet by the nightstand, and more than a little tangled in his hair. He ignores the sheer _amount_ of bandages there are, wrapped several times around his head and ending just above his eyes. He even ignores the pounding of his own heart in his ears, unsure of whether he should be relieved, elated, worried, ashamed, or some mixture. Eventually he settles on _relieved_ , and figures he can sort the rest out later.

  
"Daryl," Rick whispers, keeping his voice quiet because it's the middle of the night and he doesn't want to wake anybody, least of all Daryl. One of Daryl's hands his laid out on the bed on top of the sheet, palm up, and Rick takes it without thinking. It's warm and rough and so comforting he could cry. "I'm sorry I didn't come looking for you. I should have."

  
Daryl doesn't stir, and Rick is glad. He doesn't think he'd be able to talk to freely to Daryl when he's awake. But some part of him still hopes Daryl remembers what he says.

  
"Lori knows, I think she guessed it but I also think I might have told her. I hope you don't mind, because I really don't. I should have told her a long time ago. If she gets to have a soulmate, then so do I, right? And, you know, I'm kind of glad it's you."

  
Rick rubs his thumb against the skin of Daryl's hand. In the low light from the lantern by the bed, Daryl's face looks almost yellow. It reminds him of when Carl got shot, and the long nights Rick spent by his bed waiting for him to get better or wake up or for _something_ to happen. And now he's just thrilled that he can still see yellow; even the red-spotted bandages are a relief because they mean Daryl is still alive.

  
"I brought you something. You'll see it when you wake up. You're going to wake up, you know that, right? You're going to be fine." Rick pauses, lowering the flame in the lantern a little and moving his chair a couple of inches closer to the bed. It's the same chair he sat in when Carl was healing, when he gave him his blood and waited for him to wake up. "I saw grey, Daryl. I was so terrified, you have no idea. I thought I lost you."

  
Rick feels Daryl's pulse in his wrist underneath his fingertips and again on the side of his neck. It's slow, but consistent. He checks his own pulse and it's fast, a little jittery, and he's not sure if it's because he's embarrassed to be telling Daryl all of this, even while he's unconscious, or if it's because he's still holding Daryl's hand and it's warm and rough and comforting.

  
Rick sighs and moves away, standing up but still not letting go of Daryl's hand. "I'm glad it's you," he repeats, loud enough that he's certain Daryl will hear him if he can. "I didn't think I was, but I am."

  
He leaves a minute later, knowing he'll try to sleep in the next room but won't be able to. Knowing he'll be thinking of Daryl all night, and will probably be back in Daryl's room in the next couple of hours to check on him again anyway, to feel his pulse and listen to his breathing and assure himself that he's still alive. To look around the room and spot as many colors as he can, even rich red blood, and name them just because he _can_. To hold Daryl's hand because it feels so nice and comforting even if it makes him want to cry.

  
Just before he leaves he turns the lantern off, dulling the shadows cast by the arrangements of trinkets sitting on the nightstand - a tiny yellow pebble, a pink-and-white shell, a purple star-shaped button, and a single orange petal with brown spots on one end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. Daryl is fine. What kind of sadist do you think I am? (And yes, I know I'm going out of order of the original timeline from the show. But in the show Daryl gets shot after he goes looking for Sophia in the woods, and obviously I've altered that a bit for this story. Major stuff still stands. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with Shane. You'll find out soon enough what I decide.)


	15. Chapter 15

Rick learns a few things in the next couple of days. Some of them are good, but some of them are not.

  
He learns that Daryl has a cluster of moles on the back of his neck that kind of look like a constellation. Rick spends a full evening counting them, and discovers that there are exactly twenty. There's also a tiny one behind his ear and two more under his chin, and countless others scattered along the rest of his body. Rick sees them when Hershel comes to change Daryl's bandages, alerting Rick to the second thing he notices while Daryl is asleep.

  
Daryl has several other injuries Rick knew nothing about. There's a particularly nasty wound in his side that goes from the front of his stomach to the small of his back, right through him. And the broken arrow in Daryl's quiver tells Rick all he needs to know about it. Hershel tells Rick that it isn't very serious; the arrow went through him clean and came out the same way. But just thinking about Daryl in pain is more than Rick can handle, and he politely steps out of the room every time Hershel cleans Daryl's injuries and redresses them.

  
Rick also learns that Daryl talks in his sleep, but it's all nonsense. Rick has yet to make out a single word, even sitting with him in the middle of the night with the lights out. But talking means he's doing better, and he'll wake up any day now, Hershel says, and Rick will take any hint of good news he can get.

  
The last thing he learns while Daryl is unconscious is that scars come in a variety of colors and shades, not just one, and they can be pink or purple or white or a combination of all three. And, against the stark white skin of Daryl's back, they're _terrifying_.

  
Rick sees them the first time when Daryl rolls over in his sleep, and again when Hershel checks his bandages for blood. There are at least a dozen of them, but Rick doesn't dare count just in case there's more, and they're all faint, but he can't tell from the colors just how old they are. Some are short and jagged, but most are long, thin, and cut into his skin like a tattoo. Rick traces them with his fingertips, feeling bumps under his skin, and he wonders about them. He wonders where they came from, how long they've been on Daryl's skin, and if they hurt. He prays that they didn't, but more than that, he prays that they still don't.

  
Rick rearranges his trinkets on Daryl's nightstand and even adds one more - a bright, _butter yellow_ tiger lily with all of its petals still attached, sitting in a small cup of water closest to the bed. Beth thanked him for the flower the day after she finally came out of her room - how she knew it was Rick, he has no idea - and Rick hopes Daryl appreciates it as well. Even if he's not awake to see it.

  
He talks to Daryl, too. He says things he would never say to him if he was awake. He tells him about Lori and Carl, and Shane and the baby, and his mixed-up feelings about all of them. He tells Daryl how he still loves Carl, and how he'll try his best to love the baby, too. He tells him that Shane is different now, and that he's scared. He tells Daryl that he still loves Lori, and that will never change, but he loves her more as the mother of his child and maybe even his best friend than as a wife or a soulmate. He tells Daryl that he thinks that maybe the universe was right when it made them soulmates, even though he hopes Daryl can't hear him because he'd never admit that to him otherwise. And he even tells Daryl that he likes holding his hand, that it feels nice, and that sometimes when he can't sleep at night he comes into Daryl's room and sits with him, with the lights out, and rests his head on the bed next to Daryl's chest and just _breathes_. And that's nice, too.

  
On the second day, Carol comes in to visit. She fixes Daryl's sheets, fluffs his pillows, gently kisses his forehead, and then gives Rick the tightest hug he's ever had. She tells him to treasure what he has, because she knows what it's like, and he tells her about seeing grey and being so _scared_ and about understanding now how important Daryl is to him. But he's not sure he does, yet. Because there's something under the surface, something he doesn't tell Carol about, and it feels like it's itching its way out slowly. And every time Rick holds Daryl's hand, or sits side-by-side with him, or feels his pulse points or rests his head next to him, it eases the feeling just a little. And when she leaves he tries it too, just a small, barely-there kiss to Daryl's temple, and he's not sure how to describe what it feels like. Kind of like seeing a deer in the woods, or the color blue for the first time. Like the rainbow and the green grass without blood stains and the red barn before Walkers came out of it. Like colors, after a long period of grey.

  
Beth brings another book of colors for them on the third day, early in the morning. She's dressed in head-to-toe white, with a few spots of dirt on the knees of her pants, and brown boots that go up past her ankles. The book looks like a children's book, with thick pages that are worn out in the corners and full of so many colorful things that they're almost hard to look at. There are sections on fruits and vegetables, many of which Rick hasn't seen since he met Daryl - he learns that apples can come in red and green and yellow, and that broccoli looks like tiny trees. There are a few pages devoted to cars and buildings and other common things that Rick can only recall seeing in his occasional trips back to Atlanta for supplies - red fire trucks and brown schoolhouses and silver ladders and yellow lines on the streets. He's learned how to drive through timing - if the lights are at the top, that means _go_ , and the bottom means _stop_ \- but apparently there are colors there, too. Green and red. And stops signs are red, too. He pages through the book as soon as Beth leaves, and starts reading it to Daryl once he's memorized the first half. He pictures the colors in his head and wonders if he'll ever get to see a colorful stop light again.

  
Lori even visits Daryl once, after supper on the third day. She gives Rick a hug that feels more sincere than he expects and asks for a moment alone with Daryl. He's not even sure why - it's not like Daryl can hear what they're saying, he's been unconscious since he was shot. And Rick can't help but be suspicious, but there's nothing he can do about it, so he lets her in and leaves the room. He sits on the floor by the door the entire time, trying to eavesdrop, but he can't hear anything. And after five minutes she's done. He wonders later if he imagined the watery look in her eyes, the small sniffle before she closed the door behind her.

  
\---

  
"Are you in love with _him_ now?"

  
Rick blinks once, twice, staring at Shane through his lashes. There's a glint in Shane's eyes that Rick isn't comfortable with, and his first instinct is to take a step back.

  
"I don't know what you're talking about, brother," he says quickly, thankful for the open field behind him. He's barely been out of the house since Daryl's been in it, and when he finally steps outside to check on Carl and talk to Lori, Shane corners him. And there's something in his eyes, just like there was by the barn the day he let the Walkers out. Rick thinks he looks like a mad-man.

  
"He's your soulmate, ain't he?" Shane says, shrugging his shoulders. "Makes sense, really. Wondered why you've been so quiet lately. Haven't been hanging around. Lori said she was _worried_ about you."

  
Rick tries not to make eye contact, but Shane isn't letting up. His eyes are darker, somehow - like storm clouds. They looked muted in grey, more natural, but in full color they're almost _scary_. Rick tries not to let it get to him; Shane is his best friend, his _brother_ , and he loves him. He has no idea what happened on the night Shane went to get the medical supplies for Carl, the night Otis died, but he knows that Shane has yet to tell anybody the truth. And as much as Rick wants to know, wants to help him if he can, he also _doesn't_. Because he's pretty sure he already knows, and it's the worst possible scenario.

  
"Lori doesn't need to worry," he says, sidestepping an attempt from Shane to put his hand on Rick's shoulder. "I'm fine. And it's not like that. I love _Lori_ , she's the woman I married. Having a soulmate doesn't mean that's changed."

  
He realizes a moment too late that he's said the wrong thing. Shane's nostrils flare and he runs one hand through his rough, short hair, stopping for a moment with his palm against a tiny bald spot.

  
"I thought she told you she wasn't yours anymore," he says, voice so low Rick has to strain to hear it. "She picked you _before_ , brother. But you've got your own soulmate now, don't you? And she said she wants _me_."

  
Rick knows it would be easy to just consent. To tell Shane to take Lori, to throw down his wedding ring and let her go. If it's what she wants, then he's in no position to tell her she can't be with him. But he's not sure that it's what she wants, and Shane isn't thinking straight. There's something _dangerous_ about him right now, and he doesn't want Lori caught in the middle. He still loves her, no matter what kind of love it is, and he wants her to be happy. And he just doesn't know if Shane is going to be the kind of soulmate Glenn is to Maggie, or the kind Ed was to Carol.

  
"I'll talk to her," Rick says, holding up on hand, palm out, when Shane takes a step forward. "If she says you're right, then you're right. And that's fine. I'm not going to hold her to something that makes her unhappy."

  
Shane smirks, and it doesn't reach his eyes. "Don't you think I can make her happy?"

  
"I didn't say you couldn't." Rick looks over Shane's left shoulder, sees his friends sitting around their tents, a few out past them doing chores, and a wave of relief rolls over him. Lori is among them, sorting through clothes with Carol, and Rick knows that all he needs to do is shout out to her to end this. If anyone can control Shane, even when he's thinking crazy, it's her.

  
"I _can_ make her happy," Shane continues, looking down at the ground. "You should've seen her when you was in your coma. I kept her _alive_. She was nothing when you went down, but I made her _better_. And I can do it again."

  
"Listen," Rick says, holding up his other hand when Shane's feet shuffle towards him. "I have no doubt about that, brother. It's just not my call to make. Let me talk to her. Break things off if I have to. You're right, we've both got soulmates now, and that's how it's supposed to be. Right? So don't let it worry you, brother. I'll take care of it."

  
Rick has no intention of letting up so easily, but he has to say something to get Shane off of his back. Because he's getting a little fearful, even out here in broad daylight surrounded by other people. He knows Shane wouldn't hesitate to pin him to the ground, throw a few punches, whatever it takes to get him to do what he wants - to say what he wants to hear. And Rick has seen it ever since Carl was injured, and maybe even before then - the fierce protectiveness Shane has towards Rick's family. Like they're his own. It never bothered Rick before, because it always just meant that someone else was watching out for Lori and Carl like he was, but now it worries him. He always knew that Shane would kill to protect the people he loves, he just never thought he might be on the wrong side of that situation.

  
And Rick still loves Lori - he probably always will. Even if they get divorced, if they never see or even speak to each other again, he'll still love her. She was his first soulmate, even if she never gave him colors. And he can almost understand how Shane feels, because if she _had_ been his soulmate, then he would never give her up, not for anything.

  
And now Daryl is his soulmate. And he's really, really not sure how he feels about that. Because part of him still loves Lori, still wants to be with her, still wants to make things work even though he knows he lost her a long time ago. But the other part of him just wants to go back inside and sit with Daryl, hold his hand and read to him out of the book Beth brought them, maybe kiss his forehead again and try to figure out the swirling feelings in his chest when he does.

  
Maybe they can make it work. Maybe they can all be happy. Or maybe Rick has just signed his death warrant.

  
\---

  
"So, lemons are yellow, right? And limes are _green_. Like _lime green_ on the color wheel. You know, I don't think I've had a lemon in _years_. Since before this whole thing started. I could never figure out what to do with them. I don't even like lemonade. Lori always drank fancy cocktails with lemon wedges on the side of the glass, you know those?" Rick wrinkles his nose, even though he knows Daryl can't see it. "I always figured limes were darker, but I guess I never really thought of them as _green_. Maybe purple? That seems more fitting, somehow."

  
Daryl lays, unmoving, on the bed to Rick's right. Rick is holding up the book that Beth gave him, turned to the second page and the section on fruits. They've already gone through pineapples, apples, grapes, and a few different berries. They're all laid out on two connected pages, with tiny white words underneath that say what they are and cross-sections of the ones with seeds inside. The pictures are drawn kind of like cartoons, with bright colors and bold lines, but it's easy to identify what they represent. Rick tries to think back on the times he's eaten these things and what he thought they looked like back then, filling in the grey with colors in his mind. It's like coloring in a coloring book, seeing the blank pages suddenly burst into color before his eyes. He only wishes Daryl was awake to see it with him.

  
Rick turns the page after he's finished and continues with the two-page spread on flowers. He immediately recognizes one two rows in and smiles down at Daryl.

  
"That's a Tiger Lily," he says, pointing it out even though Daryl's eyes are closed. "This one is orange like the one you gave me. They come in yellow, too. You'll see that when you wake up." He scans the page with his eyes and points out a few more that look familiar. "That's a lily. They're white, but I could have told you that already." His finger passes over the pale, curved flower and to a much brighter one to the right. "And that's a rose. They're red, right? But I think they can be other colors, too. They're pretty. I'll bring you one next time I run across them, okay?" He thinks a full, bright red rose would look nice on Daryl's nightstand. Right next to his yellow Tiger Lily.

  
Rick smiles, looking down at Daryl's calm, still face. His bandages are stark white now, not a hint of blood, and Rick was daring enough this morning to look at his injury while Hershel cleaned it. It wasn't too bad; a little sore, swollen and puffy, but without the blood it just looked like a patch of pink skin sewn together with black threads. His face is clean - Rick helped Carol scrub as much dirt off of his visible skin as possible the afternoon of the second day - but his hair is tangled with enough dried blood to make it look almost purple. His skin is darker, fuller and even a little pink in places - a dramatic difference from the ghost-white pallor he had just three days ago. And his hands are warmer - that's Rick's favorite part.

  
Rick adjusts his grip on Daryl's left hand and reads through the rest of the flowers - orchids, carnations, daisies, tulips. He says their colors out loud, trying to match up their shades as closely as possible in his head. If Daryl were awake, they'd have the color wheels laid out between them and be pairing them with their counterparts together, but Rick doesn't want to do that without him. It wouldn't feel right to find new colors without Daryl, especially since they're all there _because_ of Daryl.

  
Rick turns the page with his thumb and continues on the next section - street signs. It's a jarring jump from flowers, but this time he sees a few he recognizes, at least.

  
"Stop signs are first," he says, pointing them out with his index finger. "They're red, but I'm sure you already know that. I didn't really pay much attention to the signs when we went into Atlanta. I think we were all too busy running from Walkers, you know? But I can remember seeing them. Did you know that stop lights are red and green? And yellow is in the middle. It would be really nice to have electricity back so we could see them. I guess I always took stuff like that for granted back then."

  
Television, cell phones, pool tables in bars and bars in restaurants and even the annoying five-minute _stop lights_. There are so, so many things Rick misses about his old life, things he didn't even give a second thought to back then. He misses eating burgers on Monday mornings with Shane, Lori's burnt home-made pancakes, playing catch with Carl in the back yard, driving his car to the gas station for a crappy cup of coffee before a long day at work. Fax machines, pinball, going bowling with his family, sleeping in a bed in his own house next to his wife. Chatting with the neighbors, boring paperwork jobs at work, even going to the DMV to get his license renewed. Mundane, trivial things that might have even irritated him in his old life. Things he wishes he could get back, a sense of _normalcy_ , knowing that life is moving along at the right pace and he's not in any danger and everybody he loves is safe.

  
He just wishes he could have had Daryl and colors in that life, too. He wishes he could have experienced his life, slow and relaxed, mundane and _perfect_ , with rainbows and color wheels and Daryl Dixon at his side. Now he might never know what color the costumes on his favorite crime show really are, or what a stop light really looks like, or what holding Daryl's hand would be like without him fighting for his life in a makeshift hospital bed.

  
And it's not _fair_. It's not fair that his life really started after the world ended. It's not fair that he met his soulmate after years of wondering and almost lost him just as quickly. It's not fair that he'll never get to know what it would be like meeting Daryl in a world where they could have been happy.

  
"Maybe we'll get it all back someday," he says, trying for a smile that he's glad Daryl can't see. He knows it's not true, and he knows Daryl can't hear him anyway. He knows that none of it matters, not even the silly little children's book in his hand, but if pretending means he can keep himself going, keep that little bit of hope left _alive_ , then he's willing to match as many flowers and color wheels as it takes.

  
And in the pause between _stop signs_ and _traffic cones_ , Rick doesn't miss the tightening around his hand, the light squeeze of Daryl's fingers curling around his own. And as much as he wants his old life back, he also wouldn't trade this - whatever it is - for anything.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not super thrilled by this chapter, which is why it took me so long to upload it. I kept changing things, and I still don't like how it turned out. I really can't write Shane, he's a very difficult character to get a handle on. Good thing he's not the star of the show, right? ;)


	16. Chapter 16

Daryl opens his eyes a few hours later.

  
It's ten at night, it's dark outside, and everyone else is in bed. Carl is sleeping in Rick's bed since Daryl has taken up his, and everyone else is outside in their tents or in other rooms in the house. The lantern is flickering on the nightstand and Rick is sitting in his chair, one hand held loosely in Daryl's and the other holding an unopened book in his lap. He finished reading it aloud half an hour ago and even re-read a few pages just to be sure he had them memorized.

  
At first, Rick doesn't notice. His eyes are half-closed and his head is resting against the back of the chair, and he's almost asleep. He figures he'll probably do what he does every other night - lay with his head on the bed next to Daryl's shoulder for as long as his body will allow, and then go back to his own room with Carl after his joints start to ache. He'll be back before morning, though.

  
He glances down at the bed when he hears a groan, and he's almost certain it's his mind playing tricks on him. After three and a half days of Daryl laying unresponsive in bed, part of Rick doesn't expect him to ever actually wake up. He's tried not to get his hopes up, every time Daryl's eyelids flicker or his hand grips around Rick's just a bit, because those could be reflexes and until Daryl's got his eyes open and his entire body moving, Rick doesn't want to read into it too much. But he's still seeing colors, and Daryl's chest is still rising and falling, and his pulse is still there every time Rick checks with his fingertips. And Hershel tells Rick that Daryl is going to be okay, that there wasn't even any damage to his brain, he's very lucky, but Rick can't believe it until he _sees_. And, a second after he looks down, he does.

  
The first thing he sees is _cerulean_ , even in the low yellow light from the lantern. Daryl's eyes are narrow, but they're bright and shiny in the dark and for just a moment Rick forgets to breathe.

  
"Hey," Rick says, watching Daryl looking up at him for a few seconds.

  
"Hi." Daryl's voice is raspier than usual, a little strained and a little deep, but it's the most welcome sound Rick has ever heard. Daryl cranes his head to look around, then winces when his bandages catch on the pillow. "What happened?"

  
Rick moves the lantern a little closer to the bed and sets the book on the nightstand. "What do you remember?"

  
Daryl closes his eyes, and for a moment Rick's heart stutters. Then he opens them again and Rick feels his pulse pick up, hammering against his throat and inside of his ears.

  
"Hunting?" Daryl says, his forehead creased. He looks down at their held hands and wiggles his fingers a little, but doesn't try to pull away. "I fell. And I landed on an arrow, hurt like a bitch, but I climbed back out and I got lost. It took me a while to find my way back, but I did, and then I saw you, and I... I can't remember, after that."

  
Daryl shakes his head, his hair falling across his forehead. He turns a little more in Rick's direction and looks at the lantern, then back at Rick. His eyes look almost black for a moment.

  
Rick holds up his free hand and Daryl stares at his palm like he's seeing a ghost. "Andrea mistook you for a Walker," Rick begins, already running through potential reactions in his mind. "She shot you, but it was an accident. She's already apologized about a hundred times, so I suggest you forgive her."

  
Daryl still looks confused, his eyes scanning the dark room even though the light from the lantern only extends a couple of feet in every direction. He tries to sit up a little straighter but a pained look flashes across his face and he lays back down, keeping his neck turned and his eyes on Rick. Suddenly, Rick feels a little exposed, and he's tempted to pull his hand away, but Daryl's grip on it is tight and it's warm and comfortable and Rick almost feels like if he lets go then Daryl will just float away. He puts his other hand on his thigh and is disappointed when he doesn't feel the press of three tiny objects in his pocket against his leg.

  
"You talked," Daryl says after a long pause. "Did I die?"

  
Rick's heart feels like it's stopped, and Rick has to remind himself that that's impossible, because he's still sitting and breathing and his pulse is still hammering in his ears. It takes him a few seconds to realize what Daryl is saying, and to remember all of the things he told Daryl when he was unconscious, thinking he couldn't hear him and wouldn't remember when he woke up. About Lori and the baby, about Shane and how terrified Rick has become of his best friend; about seeing grey and watching his entire life dissolve around him. About being glad they're soulmates, even though he's not quite sure what that means.   
He wonders how much of it Daryl heard, and how much of it he understood. Part of him really doesn't want to know.

  
Rick shakes his head slowly, almost forgetting the question. "No," he says, the word echoing in the dark room. "Hershel's a good doctor. He saved you like he did with Carl. The bullet didn't even get to your brain, it didn't break up, there's hardly even a scar."

  
For the first time, Daryl seems to notice the bandage around his forehead. He reaches up with his free hand and traces it with his fingertips, frowning when he reaches the rolled up pad of gauze over the bullet wound. Even in the low light, Rick can see the stark white fabric, not even a hint of blood showing through. Carol even cleaned the sheets yesterday - the only evidence that Daryl was even hurt is the tiny, puckered patch of skin on the side of his forehead, with a few black stitches in between that Hershel says he'll remove by the end of the week.

  
"You saw grey," Daryl says, dropping his hand back onto his stomach over the thin bedsheets. "I remember that. You were talking about Lori, and you said something about Shane, and then you told me you were _scared_." Daryl stops, stares at Rick for a moment with an unreadable expression on his face, and then drops his gaze to their joined hands on the edge of the bed. "What was it like?"

  
Rick hesitates. What's he supposed to say? It had felt like he was losing everything, all at once. He had to watch all of the beauty in his life just dissolve in front of his eyes, the colors all falling into grey every time he blinked, and there was so much _blood_ , and even in full grey it had been _terrifying_. He had spent _hours_ just thinking about everything he stood to lose - the rainbow, the treasures in his pockets, colorful markers and pretty blue eyes and the only soulmate he's ever going to have. It had been overwhelming, like he was aboard a sinking ship without a life boat, and he spent so long not even daring to open his eyes, not wanting to face any of it.

  
And the days after - the times he thought Daryl might not pull through, when he still expected every color he saw to be his last. Daryl was alive, but he wasn't waking up. He was bleeding too much, and his breathing was just a few beats too slow, and he was laying so still Rick thought he might have already died and Rick's eyes just hadn't caught up yet.

  
Daryl stares at him, not blinking for several long, silent moments, and Rick isn't sure what to say.

  
"It's okay," Daryl says, and he doesn't sound upset. "I get it. I can't even imagine. Did you really tell your wife?"

  
Rick allows himself a small smile, grateful for the change of subject. "Well, from the way I reacted, I'm pretty sure she already figured it out. I'm surprised you got all of that, though. Were you just pretending to be unconscious this whole time?"

  
Daryl lets out what Rick figures is meant to be a laugh, though it sounds more like a cough through his sore throat. Rick wants to offer him a glass of water, but that would mean letting go of his hand and getting up, leaving the room and rummaging through the kitchen in the dark, and he really doesn't want to leave Daryl right now. He still hasn't convinced himself that Daryl will still be here when he gets back.

  
"Nah. Don't remember much besides that. Don't even know why that stuff stuck, it just did."

  
Rick shrugs. "Beth was in here too, and Carol visited almost as much as I did. And Lori came by once, but she made me leave. Any chance you remember anything she told you?"

  
Daryl blinks, shifting a little in the bed. "Don't think so," he says, his voice low, and there's a flicker of something in his eyes that Rick thinks might be a lie. "Remember you giving a speech about a damn _stop sign,_ though. What was that all about?"

  
The book is still on the nightstand, right next to Rick's tiny treasures, and he picks it up with his free hand and flips through it in his lap, lifting it up a few seconds later on the page about traffic signs. Daryl follows his movements and his gaze lingers on the nightstand, and Rick wonders if he can see everything on top of it in the low light from the lantern.

  
"It's a book Beth gave me. Well, technically she brought it for you, but I've already read it, so... It got too quiet in here, during the day. I read most of it to you while you were out. Obviously I didn't think you'd remember any of it, or I might have picked a more interesting book."

  
"Nah," Daryl says, shaking his head just enough to mess up his hair, but not enough to hurt his stiff neck. "I like it. It's colorful. But you might have to read it to me again, because I think the stop sign is the only thing I remember."

  
Rick holds the book in his lap for a few minutes, looking at the colorful illustrations on the page rather than Daryl's searching eyes. Rick wants to ask what else Daryl heard, but he doesn't really want to know the answer. He said a lot of things, most of them he never would have told Daryl if he knew he'd remember them. And he doesn't know how much their relationship would change, if Daryl knew them - would he still want to hold Rick's hand, if he knew that Rick has started calling him his _soulmate_? Would he even want Rick in the same room as him, if he knew that Rick kissed his forehead and felt something in his chest, something hot and tight and tingly? Something that made him want to do it again, and more, just to see if he could bring the feeling back?

  
Daryl clears his throat, brushing his thumb against the side of Rick's hand. "I remember something about roses. And I didn't know Tiger Lilies can be yellow."

  
Rick smiles and flips the book back to the two-page spread on flowers. He points out the ones he knows, re-reads the parts he's forgotten, and waits for Daryl to comment on the ones he recognizes.

  
He doesn't tell Daryl about the red roses in his mind, the ones he wishes he had to give him. But when they pause on the bright red flowers with the fluffy petals, Rick thinks that maybe Daryl already knows. Because he still hasn't let go of Rick's hand.

  
\---

  
"So. Daryl Dixon, huh?"

  
"Lori, it's not my choice, you know that. And he's not a bad guy, it's just - "

  
"No," she interrupts. "I get it. You could've just told me. I told you about Shane."

  
_Yeah_ , Rick thinks. _Fifteen years too late._ But he doesn't say that, because Lori's finally talking to him again, and things are okay, and when was the last time anything was really _okay_ in his life?

  
"You and Shane," he begins, and he's not quite sure what he wants to say. "Is that still...?"

  
She shakes her head immediately, and something in her expression tells Rick that she's being sincere. "No. He's not... No. Not anymore."

  
"He's your _soulmate_ , Lori."

  
"And Daryl is yours," she says, and Rick's chest feels tight. Because he really doesn't know what to say to that. "The Shane that I met all those years ago, the one who made me see colors? I don't even know if he exists anymore. He hasn't been the same. Not for a long time."

  
Rick nods, because he understands. The Shane Walsh he met long before Carl was born, before he married Lori, before he became a police officer - that Shane was his best friend and his brother. That Shane would have laid down his life for any of his loved ones, but he wouldn't have done what he's doing now. What Rick knows he did to Otis, what he did to the Walkers in the barn, what he might do next. To any of them. And he's _afraid_ , because he honestly doesn't know what Shane is capable of now. But he knows that it's all going to come to a head eventually, and that Rick is positioned right in the middle of it.

  
"I told him I'd talk to you," Rick says, choosing his words carefully. "He thinks you chose me, like it's a competition. Like you and Carl and the baby are _his_. I don't know how to make him see sense, I thought maybe you could, but I don't know if he'd even listen to you anymore. When Carl got shot, I... I owe him for that, Lori. But something changed in him when he left to get those supplies. And I don't know if there's any way to get him back."

  
Lori is silent for several moments. She's sitting with him by her tent, and she shifts just a little in the grass, and Rick is struck again by the tension in the distance between them. They're only a few inches apart, he could easily reach out and touch her if he wanted to, but he doesn't. He could bump his leg against hers, or grab her hand, or put an arm around her shoulders. She pushes a lock of hair out of her face and returns her hands to her lap, digging dirt out from under her fingernails. He's not sure what to do with his hands, so he picks at the grass around his legs, tugging at spindly strands of yellow-green foliage that's in desperate need of some rain.

  
"I loved you," she says suddenly, and there's something painful in the past tense she uses. "You know I did. I wouldn't have married you if I didn't. But I loved _him_ , too. And I guess I thought that soulmates meant everything, like it was something I couldn't compete with, you know? But Carol's husband beat her. And Hershel found love again even after his soulmate died. I don't... I don't know how I feel about Shane anymore. But I know that I don't have to be with him just because he's my soulmate. That doesn't matter anymore, not with the way he is now."

  
Rick's chest feels painfully tight, like his ribs are going to snap and cave in on his heart and puncture it until it stops beating. He spent his entire life believing that soulmates didn't mean anything, that he was happy with his wife and that it didn't matter if he never met his soulmate. Because Lori was _the one_ , and she was perfect, even in grey, and no one could be better than her.

  
And now he's got Daryl, and he's got rainbows and blue eyes and cold feet on his calves under the blankets at night. And he's got tiny trinkets he can carry around in his pocket, and books with colorful illustrations in them, and afternoons spent picking apart shades on color wheels. And he's got hand-holding by the dim light of a lantern at midnight, and forehead kisses, and feeling his pulse jump underneath his fingertips. And he kind of _wants_ to believe in soulmates now, because he wants to believe in _Daryl_ , and he wants Shane and Lori and Carl and the baby to all be happy, and he's so afraid that one wrong move is going to unravel everything.

  
"Sometimes I wish we could just go back to the way things were, before. Before everything. We were happy once, weren't we?"

  
Lori shrugs, and Rick feels like he's out in the middle of the ocean, reaching out for a life raft that's just a few feet too far away. She gives him a small, sideways smile but doesn't look him in the eye, focusing on her hands in her lap and the blades of grass poking against her bare legs.

  
"I don't think you ever really know if you're happy until you're _there_ ," she says. "I thought I was happy with Shane, before. I thought that how I felt was worth it all, even if it meant I might be hurting you. It wasn't worth it, in the end."

  
"What about now? What happens next?"

  
A breeze blows Lori's hair around her face. Rick wishes he was still inside, sitting in the chair next to Daryl's bed. He could be holding his hand and reading colors to him again, even though they both know them all by heart now. Sometimes he wishes he could do that with Lori, but he knows it wouldn't be the same. Because she's sitting just a few inches away from him, and her hands are _right there_ , and he has no desire to move any closer. She's not _his_ anymore, but part of him thinks that maybe she never really was.

  
"I've got this baby on the way," she says, moving one hand to rest on her nearly-flat stomach. "And you've got Daryl. I think we're gonna be okay."

  
He wants to argue with her - tell her he's not gay, and even if he was, he's not interested in Daryl. Not like that. Just because they're soulmates, doesn't mean they're meant to fall in love. He just wants to hold Daryl's hand, and sleep next to him, and kiss him until the feeling in his chest takes flight and the ache in his bones melts away. But that's not love. Because Rick loved Lori - he still _does_ \- and it never felt like that.

  
But it's _something_. Because Daryl exists in rainbows and blue eyes, and yellow pebbles, pink-and-white shells, purple star-shaped buttons, and smooth orange petals with brown dots in the middle. And Rick kind of just wants to put him in his pocket and carry him everywhere until he figures out what that _something_ really is. Even if it takes a lifetime.

  
And then, maybe, _maybe_ , they really will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of a boring chapter, sorry. I've been working on this off and on for so long, I really didn't feel like going back and changing the parts I don't like. So this is how it's going to go, I guess. Communication is key, right? Maybe now Rick and Lori will finally start getting back to a good place, and Rick can just talk Shane into not being so crazy anymore. 
> 
> Or. Things are gonna get really interesting in the next chapter. Be prepared to leave the farm soon, folks. (On the plus side, I adore the prison. Those seasons were always my favorites). 
> 
> Thank you so, so much for your patience, everyone. Updates will be much faster from now on, I promise :)


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is unnecessarily long. Sorry about that. I guess I got a little long-winded. Still, it's pretty important to the plot, even if it's a little boring ;)

It doesn't take long for everything to fall apart again.

  
Three days after he wakes up, Daryl is able to sit up on his own and even stand, supported by Rick on one side and Carol on the other. A week later, he's walking; Rick brings him outside and they sit in the grass, and it's peaceful and Rick kind of wishes it could go on forever. And then, four days after that, Shane asks Rick to go scavenging with him, and Rick wants to say no. He wants to stay with Daryl, and he doesn't want to be alone with Shane right now, and he wonders when he became so fearful of the man he once called his _brother_.

  
So he agrees to go. He thinks that maybe it will give him the opportunity to talk to Shane - _really_ talk to him. About Lori and the baby, about Daryl and _soulmates_ , about what happened to Otis and why Shane broke into the barn and let all the Walkers out, and why he's been acting like a completely different person ever since. Maybe he can bring out that piece of Shane that he knows is still there - the piece Lori fell in love with, because Rick knows that she did. This could be good for all of them, it could be just what Rick needs to bring his family back together.

  
Or it could be a disaster. It could break them apart for good. And that's what ends up happening, really.

  
Because they're barely even across the boundaries of the farm before Shane pulls out his gun, and aims it squarely against Rick's chest.

  
\---

  
"Put it down, brother," Rick warns, but there's something lost in Shane's eyes. Even in the dark, Rick can see the glint, the dark shadow cast over his face, the way he sneers and wrinkles his nose and narrows his eyes. Without the sunlight to illuminate his familiar features, Shane looks like a stranger.

  
"Lori broke it off with me," Shane says, and his voice sounds mangled, like he's fighting through crushed vocal chords. He breaks off a choked noise and sways on his feet, holding his gun steady. Rick feels his own pistol at his hip, but he doesn't reach for it. "Said she didn't love me anymore. You know anything about that?"

  
The grass crunches underneath Rick's feet as he makes small steps, at first away from Shane and then towards him. It hasn't rained in days, maybe even a week, and everything green is turning yellow. There's a bite of winter in the air, and all Rick wants to do is go back to the farm and back into bed, next to Daryl, close enough that maybe he can hold his hand or press their legs together.

  
And he's not sure if their relationship can survive this - his and Shane's. Even if Shane puts the gun away and takes a step back, even if they go back to the farm together with the promise to make amends. When Lori cheated on him with Shane, when she told Rick that she was pregnant with his baby and even when Rick had to watch his marriage dissolve in front of his eyes - he never blamed Shane. He was always fighting for his soulmate, and Rick can't fault him for that. He would have done the same, if Lori had been his soulmate. He might even do the same for Daryl.

  
But _this_. This is _crazy_. This is Shane, holding a pistol level with his chest, shuffling his feet in the grass and moving close enough to Rick to press the barrel against his shirt. And Rick knows, no matter how this night plays out, that they'll never be able to go back to being brothers again.

  
"I talked to her," Rick admits, fighting to keep his voice calm. Shane's head is shaking, his lower lip between his teeth, and for just a moment his grip on his gun wavers. "I asked her how she felt. She told me that she wasn't sure, and that she'd talk to you. That's _all_. I didn't know what she was going to do. And none of it is because of _me_ , brother. She didn't choose me, she didn't choose _either_ of us."

  
The more Rick talks, the more pleading his voice becomes. And the closer Shane steps, until Rick can feel the chill of the cold metal in his skin. He moves his hand down his hip, fingers brushing the holster of his own weapon, but he doesn't draw it. If this all ends in a gun shot, he doesn't want it to be from his.

  
"You heard about Daryl, right? Lori told you?" Rick asks, watching Shane's reactions carefully. "He's my soulmate, and I know it's not conventional, and I know how crazy it sounds, but Lori's not _mine_ anymore, brother. I've got a soulmate now; I didn't before, but now I do, and I swear I'm not trying to take Lori away from you."

  
Rick isn't even sure what he's saying anymore, it all sounds garbled and mixed up in his head. He's just trying to get Shane to back down - the rest they can figure out later. If he can get the gun away from Shane, make him let it go, get him back to camp and around other people, maybe they can all talk some sense into him. Or at least hide his weapons until he realizes how crazy he's being.

  
"You know," Shane says, speaking over Rick with his voice raised just a bit too much, "everything was fine before you showed up. Before you were shot, we had to sneak around, you know? It was hard, and it was never enough, but I loved her so I made it work. And then you landed in the hospital, and the doctors said you might never wake up, and _I'm_ the one who comforted her. When you weren't there, she depended on _me_. Her and Carl, and this baby she's gonna have, they were _mine_ , and you just came back like nothing ever happened and took it all _away_ from me."

  
Rick holds up his left hand, as close to Shane's gun as he can get, and pulls his own pistol out of its holster with his right. He holds it up, barrel down, and focuses on the movements of Shane's hands. His grip on his gun tightens, his knuckles turning white enough to glow in the darkness, and he raises it a few inches. It's level with Rick's neck, now, and somehow that scares him just a bit more.

  
"I didn't _know_ ," Rick says, his voice getting a little higher pitched, a little more strained. A little more fearful. "I didn't know you were soulmates until she showed me the pregnancy test. And I would have backed off the second she told me to, you know that. I wanted her to be happy, and I thought that meant being with _me_ , but I _never_ would have stayed with her if I thought it wasn't what she wanted. Or if I knew it was hurting you. You _know_ that, Shane. You know _me_."

  
Rick knows that Shane is the better shot - he has been since they shot their first guns together, side-by-side. Shane is faster, he's fiercer, and he's got a bloodthirsty side that Rick has only ever seen on the job a handful of times. Child abusers, domestic violence cases, and one or two murders that left behind barely recognizable bodies. Times when people, innocent people, were _hurt_ , killed in the most tragic, painful ways possible. And Shane had never hesitated, not even for a second; Rick had barely even registered him drawing his gun before the shot rang out, and Rick knows that now is no different. If Shane thinks it's the right thing to do, then Rick will be dead before he can even get a proper grip on his own pistol.

  
"I know you, brother." Shane lowers his gun again, just a little, but his hands don't shift and his expression doesn't change. "But I know Lori, too. And I know that she pushed me away for _years_ because she was married to you, because she wanted _you_. And she's going to do the same thing. Every time. As long as you're here, she's always gonna pick _you_."

  
Rick wishes, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he could put a tangible meaning to his relationship with Daryl right now. Holding his hand, kissing his forehead, carrying his treasures in his pockets. Feeling his own heartbeat in his ears and down his throat and against his fingertips, the pace picking up every time Daryl sits close to him, touches his shoulder or his leg or his hip. He wishes he could tell Shane what it is that he feels - he wishes he could tell him that he's moved on from Lori, that he's never going back to her, because he's got _Daryl_ now, and that's enough. But he just doesn't _know_. He's been in love, but only once, and that was with Lori. He doesn't even know if he can fall in love like that again with anyone else, let alone a _man_. Let alone _Daryl Dixon_.

  
And he doesn't know if he _wants_ to, either. Lori is his wife, the mother of his child. He fell in love with her in grey, and he fell in love with her again in color. And he wants to tell Shane that he's over her, that she means nothing to him anymore, that he could just walk away and never look back, but he can't. And he's got a terrible feeling in his chest that not knowing how he feels might cost him his life, but more than that, it might cost Daryl his _colors_.

  
And he _can't_. He can't take that away from him. He can't put Daryl through the same thing he went through, watching the colors fade in front of his eyes, keeping his eyes closed for hours and willing them to come back, expecting the worst news at any moment. People only get one soulmate, and Rick and Daryl have both found theirs, and Rick isn't willing to let either of them lose that. Not _now_.

  
So he drops his gun. It lands with a dull _thump_ in the dry grass by Shane's feet, and Shane stares at it. He almost loses his grip on his own weapon, his eyes drawn down, and Rick's chest feels tight. His throat clenches and he feels like he can't breathe for a moment, and it's only a few seconds, but it feels like a lifetime. Watching, waiting for Shane to make his move. He can either drop his gun, too, or raise it even higher, and Rick can't read his expression in the dark. All he can see is the glint of his silver gun, the whites of Shane's eyes, and his hands, which have just started to tremble.

  
Rick almost smiles, because it's _over_. The gun is lowering, his fingers tapping out a nervous beat on the cold metal, and Rick draws his hands back to his hips, holding them there. There's only a foot or two between them, and Rick can hear Shane's heavy breathing, like he's just run a marathon, and he thinks he can even see his mouth, curling up into the barest hint of a smile, showing teeth. His eyes glint, and his feet shuffle, and a single moment stretches on into hours. And Rick moves, just an inch, and something inside of Shane snaps.

  
It happens in seconds. One, two, three, four, five. Maybe six. Shane raises his gun again, towards Rick's temple, and locks his eyes with Rick's for just an instant. And Rick knows, he sees it - the moment when Shane decides he's going to shoot him. The murderous flicker in his irises, the cold sneer of his mouth and the set of his jaw. Rick has seen that expression on countless men, and even a few women, and it always ends in a shot. Somebody always dies, and Rick realizes a second too late that his gun is on the ground.

  
But his knife is still hooked in the waistband of his jeans, and he pulls it out before his brain has even caught up with what he's doing. His body goes on autopilot, just like it used to so long ago when he was still a police officer. Back when every moment was a fight for his life, and if somebody had to die, it wasn't going to be him. And it isn't. Before the knife has caught on the front of Shane's shirt, before he's pushed it through his skin, between his ribs and straight into his heart, Rick knows how this is going to end. He thinks he might have known it all along, because his gun is on the ground, but his knife isn't.

  
It's too easy, and that scares Rick. The knife goes in like it's slicing through butter, pure adrenaline pushing Rick's hands forward, blood pooling over his knuckles. The gun in Shane's hands goes off, but it misses its mark - the bullet whizzes past Rick's ear and he can hear it, but he can't feel it, and the gun slips between them in the grass as they fall, first Shane and then Rick, the knife keeping a few extra inches between them. Rick twists the weapon, blood making his hands slick, making it difficult to keep his grip on the handle. His head is pounding, and the ground is spinning underneath him, and it takes almost a full minute for his brain to catch up with his body.

  
Shane makes a noise, somewhere between a gurgle and a cough, and it's like pulling a blanket off of Rick's head - everything comes back into focus, and suddenly he's lying there in the grass, on top of his best friend, with blood on his hands and the handle of a knife an inch away from his chest, and it's so jarring that he doesn't believe it at first. Because there's no way he would ever do something like this. He would rather let himself be shot than kill his best friend, his _brother_. But that's exactly what he's just done.

  
Shane's eyes don't slide closed like they do in the movies - they're open, staring, and in the darkness they look almost black. Rick looks down at his face, his heaving chest, his hands twitching in the dry grass, and he counts the moments. He counts the breaths, frantic at first, then slower, until they stop completely. And he watches Shane's last intake of air, sees it leave his lungs, knows the moment it's all over. With a gasp, and a flicker of light in his eyes, and a final twist of his fingers at Rick's side. Rick's hands smear blood on his shirt, and Rick shakes him, shouts his name, pulls the knife out and presses against the slowly streaming wound with his hand, but he's too late.

  
It's dark out now, and in the dim light of the moon, all Rick can see is red. It's on his hands, all over Shane's chest, coming out of his mouth, soaking into the dry grass and turning it brown. He wipes his hands on the ground, blinks back moisture in his eyes, puts a finger to Shane's pulse points and waits, slides his brother's eyes closed, and then turns and vomits all over a patch of dead weeds.

  
He heaves until all that comes up is bile, and then keeps going until all he's pushing out is air. His lungs feel like deflated balloons - like no matter how deeply he breathes, the air won't fit, and it comes out too fast, too much. His chest feels tight, and the air is too cold, and his body won't stop shaking, and he tries to stand up but it takes him several minutes because his legs are like jelly and his body is just too heavy.

  
He doesn't look down, because he doesn't want to see it. Maybe if he goes back to camp, pretends nothing happened, then nobody will ever know. Things can go back to normal, and he won't have to be afraid of Shane's reactions anymore, he won't have to worry about Lori or Carl or Daryl or the baby. He can just pretend that Shane went scavenging and never came back. He can hide the body, dig up the bloody grass, wash his hands and change his clothes and wipe the tears out of his eyes before anyone even notices. He can have Lori back, if he really wants to. The baby can be _his_ , and he can have his family back, just the way he always wanted.

  
But he doesn't want that anymore. He wants his brother back. He wants fast food runs at lunch time on the job, taking calls together and having each other's backs. He wants baseball games on Sundays and playing catch in the back yard with Carl and barbecues with matching grills and aprons. He wants side-by-side shooting on the gun range, college parties, staying up all night talking on the phone about some girl he met at a bar. He wants the moment Carl was born, and Shane was waiting outside of the door, sitting in a tiny grey chair with a string of balloons and a banner that said _it's a boy_. He wants that again with the next baby, even if it's not his, even if he has to be the one sitting outside waiting. He wants to tell Shane about meeting his soulmate, even if it's a man, even if it's Daryl Dixon, because he knows all Shane would care about is the colors, talking about the _moment_ , with Lori in her red dress with her hair up and her bright blue dangly earrings.

  
And he starts to cry, loud, hiccupping tears, because all he wanted was to keep the color in his life, and he never realized that losing Shane would hurt just as much. Probably more, because Carl is going to lose his role model, the man who was there for him when Rick couldn't be. The baby is going to grow up without a father, and Lori is going to spend the rest of her life without her soulmate. Rick, who fought so hard for the colors in his and Daryl's lives, has just taken them away from Lori. She's going to wake up in the morning and see grey, and she's going to _know_. And part of Rick thinks it would have been better if Shane had killed him instead.

  
"Dad?"

  
He can barely see Carl in the dark, standing ten feet away from him, his hands at his sides. Rick can see the whites of his eyes as he glances, first at Rick, then at the body on the ground, and back at his father with wide, frantic eyes. He makes a choked sound like he's trying to say something, but nothing comes out. Rick wants to offer an explanation, but he can't, because there really isn't one. It was self defense; Shane was _crazy_ , it was bound to happen sooner or later anyway; Rick was afraid he would lash out at Lori or Carl or Daryl, and he was protecting them as much as himself. But he wasn't. He wasn't even thinking when he did it, it was like a reflex, he saw Shane's gun move and his first instinct was to stop him. He doesn't even know if Shane was going to kill him, there's always a chance that he wasn't, but it doesn't matter anymore. Because his own son is staring at him with fear in his eyes, like he's looking at a murderer, and Rick realizes a moment too late that that's exactly what he is.

  
And Carl has a gun - Rick doesn't know where he got it from, but Carl has been in the back of his mind lately, and anything could have happened between Daryl being shot and now. He hasn't been there for Carl, just like he hasn't been there for Lori or Shane or anyone else. Carl has grown up, and he hasn't even noticed. Just like he didn't notice how much Shane resented him until he was staring down the barrel of his gun. He's been so worried about keeping everyone safe, he didn't even know his own son learned to shoot a gun from someone else.

  
Carl raises the gun, and his hands are eerily steady. Practiced, almost. And it reminds him so much of Shane that Rick's chest constricts, his hands clench at his sides and for a single, terrifying moment he almost wishes he still had his knife on him.

  
Rick's legs feel unsteady and all he wants is to collapse onto the ground again, away from Shane and Carl and the rest of the world. To sleep on the crunchy, dry grass and wake up in the morning somewhere, anywhere else. Back at the camp, before the Walkers attacked and drove them away. Back at the hospital, before he realized that the world had ended while he was asleep. Back home, with Lori and Carl and Shane, having a barbecue in the back yard and playing three-person catch with his son and his best friend.

  
Carl fires the gun. Rick turns his head so quickly that his neck cracks, his entire body pulsing with the sound of the bullet whipping through the air. Past his head, over his shoulder, and for a second he thinks that Carl has missed the shot - that he was aiming for Rick, and he just missed. But then something falls behind him, hitting the dry ground with an audible _thump_ , and he turns and sees Shane, his eyes wide and milky white and almost _glowing_ in the darkness, several inches closer to Rick than he was a few minutes ago.

  
He shifts, and he breathes, and he tries to take it all in, but it's just too much. And when Carl pockets his gun and starts walking away, it's nearly a full minute later before Rick has managed to convince his feet to follow. His steps are staggered, his legs are weak, and his entire body feels on the verge of collapse. Leaving Shane behind feels _wrong_ , somehow. Shane turning into a Walker feels even worse. And Carl shooting him - it kind of feels like the world is ending all over again.

  
So he walks - across the sprawling field, filled with dying grass and weeds that crunch underneath his feet. He's aware of the sweat beading on his forehead, the blood making his hands slick, and his pulse drowning out the sound of his own heavy breathing.

  
He doesn't notice the herd of Walkers stumbling towards the farm from several yards behind them, following the sound of two loud gunshots, until it's too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter will have more Daryl in it, I promise :) Also, I thought about redeeming Shane, but I kind of love his crazy. And I didn't want to stray too far from canon, so. (And yes. I didn't kill Dale, and I've completely erased Randall. They're not really that important here anyway.) 
> 
> Also, a quick poll: How far do you guys think I should take this story? I could, ideally, take it all the way to the end of season 8, but then it'd be really, really long. But I could do it. But if you guys would rather see Rick and Daryl get together sooner, and forget about the rest of the show, then that's fine, too. Although I kind of want to write a bit of Negan in here, and Daryl's got some pretty cool episodes in season 7. But I'll consider whatever you guys suggest. After all, it's you I'm writing this for ;)


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really, really sorry for the late update. I won't go into details, but real life has been pretty hard to manage lately. And this chapter was particularly hard to write, for some reason. It took me several days to finish it, and I avoided posting it thinking it was going to get better with time somehow, but it hasn't and I still don't like it. It's probably my worst chapter. More of a filler than anything else. I'm already working on the next chapter and it'll be much better, I promise. This one just wouldn't cooperate, and I couldn't fix it no matter how much I tried to redo what I didn't like. 
> 
> Please bear with me. I really tried. I don't know why this one didn't turn out, but I can assure you that the next one will be much, much better. And the update will be faster. It's just been a rough week. Thanks for sticking with me this far, guys :)

It's pure chaos, and it doesn't stop until he's out of the farm and on the road, the burning barn flickering in the rear-view mirror.

  
And Daryl isn't with him. And he's starting to panic, he really is, because he found Carl, and he saw Maggie and Glenn drive off together, but he doesn't know where anyone else is. Lori, Hershel, Andrea; he thinks he saw Beth, but he heard a distinctly female scream before she disappeared around the back of the house, and he really doesn't know. He searched the house, checked Daryl's room twice, and only drove off once the Walkers got too close to the car because Carl is with him, and he can't let anything happen to his son, especially if he's all Rick has left.

  
It hasn't really hit him yet - what happened in the field. He thinks it might have started to, when he threw up in the grass and cried himself hoarse, but Carl shot Shane, and then he noticed the herd, and they started the barn on fire to distract the Walkers but it barely worked, it really didn't, because there were too many of them and they were all over the farm and there were so many bodies, Rick can't be sure he even saw _any_ of his friends among them. He wants to believe that he did, that they're still alive, that they all made it back to their cars and Daryl made it to his bike, and they're all going to end up in the same place somehow and everything is going to be okay again.

  
Except that Rick just murdered his best friend, and Lori lost her soulmate, and Rick is pretty sure he's got feelings for _Daryl Dixon_ , and everything is about as messed up as it can be. Even in the middle of the apocalypse.

  
And Carl is crying in the passenger seat, curled up with his knees to his chest, not even wearing his seat belt but Rick supposes it doesn't really matter anymore. He's got his gun at his hip, and Rick swears he saw him fire it twice, into the crowd of Walkers behind the barn, and he's not sure when his son stopped being _his son_. And when he started being Shane's.

  
He wants to turn back. Carl is screaming at him to turn back, to fight until it's over, until they find Lori and the others, alive or dead, and Rick doesn't want to argue with him. Because he understands. He wants to go back for Lori and Daryl and everyone else, and every mile he puts between his car and the farm is like a nail being driven into his skin, but he _can't_ go back. By now the fire has spread, and the Walkers have taken over every inch of the farm, and it's still dark out - it would be like finding a needle in a haystack. They can go back later, maybe, but even then it would be more for recovering bodies than searching for their friends. Everyone who's alive has already made it out, and everyone who hasn't is gone.

  
He checks for markers along the road - things that he can identify, not to lead him back, not even to tell him where he's going, but to tell him that Daryl is _okay_. There's a thin yellow sign on the side of the road just outside of the farm, with black lines painted on it that Rick thinks he should recognize, but he doesn't. There's a stop sign a few miles past that, and it's bright red with faded graffiti on the bottom. There's a section of road that's blocked off with orange traffic cones, like it was a construction zone at one point, but now it's just a mess of gravel and abandoned equipment. Rick makes a sharp turn and hits a cone, and he stares at it for a moment too long as he passes.

  
And every color he sees is like pure relief - a breath of fresh air, like his deflated lungs can finally take in enough, like the blood is pumping back into his heart, and his entire body is tingling with it. As long as he's still seeing colors, Daryl is still alive. He blinks, and expects to see grey every time he opens his eyes. He watches traffic signs for fading colors, keeps an eye on the trees in his peripheral vision, watches the rear-view mirror and the yellow lines on the road behind the car. He glances over at Carl, memorizes his dingy red shirt and blue jeans, his white shoes with dark blue stripes, his dirty yellow socks peeking out underneath the hems of his pants. He shifts in his seat until he can feel the familiar press of his treasures in his pockets, the smooth pebble, the rough edges of the pink-and-white shell, the dull point of the star-shaped button, and the crinkling of a piece of paper with lines on it and an orange flower petal folded up inside. The laminated sheet with the colors wheels on it is still in the drawer in his room, and he left the book Beth gave him in Daryl's. But he has those colors memorized, and he recites them in his head on the long drive away from the farm - the _forest green_ trees, ruby red signs, Carl's _royal blue_ pants and the _navy blue_ stripes on his shoes. And his mind goes back to _cerulean_ , like it always does, and he has to tighten his grip on the steering wheel to keep himself steady.

  
Just a few days ago, he was celebrating with Daryl, who was finally able to walk around the farm on his own. He was holding the brunet's hand, even though he didn't need to, and everything had been so _normal_. So ordinary. It was almost like a summer vacation, staying at a farm in the middle of nowhere with the rest of his family - he had almost let himself forget about the Walkers and the end of the world. About Lori and the baby, about Shane and the _fear_ , and everything had been just him and Daryl and it had been great.

  
And now everything is going to change again, just like that. Just like it has so many times since his coma. And he's going to have to adapt all over again.

  
\---

  
Carl falls asleep half an hour into the drive - at least, Rick thinks he's sleeping. He keeps shifting his shoulders and making noises, but his eyes are closed and he doesn't answer when Rick tries to talk to him. At every mile marker Rick slows down and looks around, along the road and behind them, and into the thick woods on either side. He's not sure what he expects to see - if any of his friends made it out alive, they'll be driving cars, not running through the trees. He'll hear them coming, he'll see them in his rear-view mirror. He turns off the car radio five minutes into an old CD he doesn't recognize and _listens_ , and he keeps getting his hopes up, expecting to hear the familiar _thrum_ of a motorcycle engine revving up behind him, but it never comes. And after a while he stops hoping.

  
He makes it as far as the highway, the familiar stretch of abandoned road that he remembers taking on their way out of the quarry, before he stops the car. He pockets the keys and sits for a few minutes in silence, watching Carl's shoulders move up and down in time with his breathing, his hands clenched in the fabric of his shirt against his stomach. He looks smaller than Rick remembers - even smaller than the boy who shot Shane, who ran into a herd of Walkers with his gun raised and burned the barn down from the inside. Sometimes Rick forgets that he's just a boy.

  
The world is changing faster than Rick can keep up, and Rick tries his best to hold onto _normal_ , to the way things were _before_. And sometimes he forgets that things can still be _okay_ , even in the middle of a tragedy like this. He had a great life, before - he had a wife and a son and a best friend, and barbecues and playing catch in the back yard, and a job he didn't hate, and a house he could barely afford, and friends he invited over during the summer every other weekend. He was happy, and then he got shot, and then he woke up to the end of the world and it felt like everything was suddenly over. Like flipping a switch. Because Lori was cheating on him with his best friend, and then she got pregnant, and a lot of people died, including Shane, and then they all lost the farm and each other, and Rick honestly isn't even sure if any of his friends are still alive.

  
But. Between the lines, between the Walkers and the blood in the grass and the barn up in flames - there was Daryl. There was the sudden burst of colors, the most spectacular thing Rick has ever seen. There were rainbows, practicing colors with Carol under a tree back at camp, matching Daryl's eyes to colors on the wheel, picking flowers with Beth, seeing in full color after the night of grey when Daryl was shot. There was sleeping next to Daryl, walking with him through the farm, washing clothes and talking about yellow rocks and different colors of Tiger Lilies and the bushy red roses in the book Beth gave them. And the feeling in Rick's chest when he's close to Daryl, that hasn't been there in _years_ , not since he married Lori, not since long before she met Shane.

  
And he knows that Daryl is still alive. He sees it in the blue minivan one lane over from his parked car, in the green tree-shaped air freshener hanging above the dashboard, and in the _azure_ eyes that stare back at him from the rear-view mirror.

  
And it takes ten, maybe twenty minutes, but he just sits in the car and waits, waits for Carl to wake up and for a _miracle_ to happen, because that's all he has right now. And he hears the engine first, the low growl coming up from behind the car, but he almost doesn't believe it until he gets out and looks. Part of him doesn't expect to see Daryl, and he certainly doesn't expect to see _everyone_ , but there they are, trickling in like a slow rain - first Daryl on his motorcycle, with Carol holding on behind him, then Maggie and Glenn, Beth and Hershel, with Sophia and Lori in the back seat. There are a few people missing, and Rick counts them out in his head, but most of his family is _there_. Alive, clustered in the seats of a handful of cars they brought with them to the farm, bloody and bruised and looking a little worse for wear, but they're _safe_.

  
And for a minute, a few minutes, all Rick sees is Daryl.

  
He barely notices Carl clamoring out of the car and running into his mother's arms. Hershel and Maggie are hugging on one side of the highway, and Sophia and Carol are having an emotional reunion by Daryl's bike, but Daryl is on his feet, standing awkwardly on the side of the road, his hands shoved in his pockets. He's shuffling his feet and looking up at Rick through his lashes; the bandage around his head has been gone for days, but he's got a scar that'll probably be there forever - a small, puckered circle on his forehead, all pink and purple scar tissue, half covered by his hair. It reminds Rick of the scars on his back, but more than that - it reminds Rick of the nights he spent by Daryl's bed, waiting for something, _anything_ to happen. Describing colors from the book Beth gave him, rearranging the trinkets on the nightstand, scooting his chair close enough for his legs to touch the bed, close enough for him to rest his head on the pillow by Daryl's, to hear his breathing and feel it on his face.

  
He sees Lori out of the corner of his eye, holding one arm around Carl's shoulders, pressing her face into the back of his head. And he passes her by. He walks until he's running, and all he can see is the shaky image of Daryl, bouncing shapes and colors blurring in the corners of his eyes. He thinks Daryl is smiling, he must be, but he doesn't see much else before he reaches him, and immediately his arms go up, around Daryl's shoulders, locking and squeezing tightly like he expects that if he loosens his grip Daryl will disappear. Daryl's shoulders are tense, his body stiff with coiled muscles that twist under Rick's arms, but after a few seconds he relaxes, and after a few more Rick feels a motion on the small of his back, two hands curling into fists in the fabric of his shirt. He pushes his face into the crook of Daryl's neck and breathes, Daryl's messy hair tickling his nose, his skin soft and smelling of dirt and blood and nature, like the woods after a long day of hunting or the plot of land behind the barn where the Greene's planted their vegetables.

  
And everything, _everything_ melts away. The fear, the sadness, the confusion. And in the span of a few minutes he notices, he _understands_ , and he knows why Daryl was made to be his soulmate. Because he was lost the first moment he saw those pretty blue eyes of his, and he's just as lost now. Only now he thinks he knows what, exactly, that means. And it's terrifying and exciting all at once, like it used to be with Lori, except Daryl is his _soulmate_ , so he knows how this is all meant to play out. And if he's supposed to fall in love with Daryl Dixon - well, then, he supposes that's okay. More than okay, really.

  
And he's tempted, for all of the full minute they're embracing, to pull away and kiss him. For real this time - not just a peck on the forehead or the cheek while he's asleep. The timing is almost perfect - they're in the middle of a deserted highway, off to the side away from pretty much everyone else, and they just escaped with their lives when Rick was almost certain at least one of them wouldn't. And Daryl is sweaty and filthy and smells like dirt and blood, but his hands are wound tightly in the fabric of Rick's shirt, and he's so relaxed in Rick's arms that Rick half expects his eyes to be closed when he looks at him, but they aren't. They're dark blue, like a stormy sky, and staring right at him, and it's almost like a scene in a movie. All they'd need is some romantic music in the background and maybe a little less Walker guts between them, and it would be perfect.

  
And he almost does it. He leans back, and he looks at Daryl for a long moment, and there's something in their eye contact that makes him shiver. He's halfway there, and he thinks Daryl is on the same page, maybe he has been this whole time and Rick has just been too dense to notice. Rick's heart is thudding so loudly in his chest that he's afraid Daryl will hear it, that it'll give him away. Which is ridiculous, because he's about to kiss the brunet, and he's pretty sure that'll give him away anyway. He's nervous, and his palms are as sweaty as the back of his neck, curls forming at his hairline, and he almost chickens out. But he doesn't have to, because he hears a noise that stops him in his tracks, and the moment is gone in a heartbeat.

  
It's Lori - of course it is. And he wants to be upset, because he very nearly forgot she was there at all, but the pitiful sob she lets out echoes along the empty highway and reaches him two cars down, and it breaks his heart. And all at once it hits him again, what he's done, and it feels _wrong_ to even be thinking about kissing his soulmate right now - so soon after he _murdered_ hers.

  
He stays, rooted to his spot by guilt and shame, and watches while Beth and Maggie and Carol console her. Carol knows what it's like to lose a soulmate, even an abusive one like Ed, and Beth - Rick looks around, and he can't see Jimmy anywhere. He checks the backs of the cars, scans down the sides of the highway, into the trees on either side, but he can't see him. Beth isn't sobbing like Lori; her shoulders are still, her eyes wide open and her hands steady around Lori's shoulders. But there are tear tracks down both cheeks, they glisten in the low sun and from where Rick's standing they look almost reflective, like glass. The urge to comfort her - to comfort them both - is strong, but Daryl is holding tightly to his hand and he knows it's for the best. If she knew the truth, she wouldn't want his sympathy; he wouldn't even be here right now if she knew. But he thinks Daryl might know, because the hand he's holding is the one that stabbed Shane, the one that's covered in dried blood that's not nearly dark enough to be from a Walker.

  
\---

  
"You did what you thought was right. Ain't no shame in that."

  
"I _killed_ him, Daryl," Rick says, pacing by the side of the road. They're scavenging - or they're _supposed_ to be, because none of them knows where to go from here. It's not like large, secure buildings just appear randomly in the middle of nowhere. "What if it had been _me_? He was going to, I know he was. What if he'd killed _me_ instead?"

  
"I'd have skinned him alive the second I saw him, that's what," Daryl replies, too fast and too sharp and there's something a little frightening in his tone.

  
Rick pauses, holding up a blanket from the back of a minivan that he figures they could stand to use, with how close to winter it is. A house with a heater doesn't matter when there's no electricity. "You would?" he asks, and there's a beat of hesitation in his words. Maybe a little uncertainty. "You think that's what Lori should do? To me?"

  
Daryl shrugs, throwing a portable GPS out of the glove box of the same car and rummaging through it for a first aid kit. "Don't know if she'd have it in her. Being your wife and all. And you didn't do nothing wrong. Nothing I wouldn't have done, anyway. He was a bastard, coming at you first, unguarded and all."

  
"I had my knife."

  
"Yeah, but did _he_ know that? A gun beats a knife, man. Ninety percent of the time. I'd say you got lucky, but I guess I wouldn't call it luck." Daryl sighs, glancing back at Rick for a moment before sweeping a whole pile of vehicle registrations and maintenance sheets onto the floor. "You did the right thing, Rick. And I'm really glad you're not dead."

  
There's something in the way he says it that has Rick's heart beating like a drum. He feels like he's already lost his moment, and now they're just biding their time. Maybe waiting for another one. Rick is almost certain that Daryl wanted to kiss him, too - his hands lingered just a beat too long, he didn't break eye contact even though Rick knows he must have wanted to. And Rick knows what he wants, now. They've had too many close calls not to be drawn to each other, not to make every moment count while they still can. But Rick just can't find it in himself to bring it up, to force it when they're in the middle of the highway rooting through the cars of people who are probably dead. Lori's in the back of Maggie's old college sedan, crying her eyes out or asleep, Rick doesn't know. And he can't even talk to _her_ , because he knows that once he does, everything will come spilling out, and she'll hate him for it. And he doesn't know if he's ready for that yet.

  
"Yeah," Rick says, and for a split second Daryl looks up at him, his eyes storm-blue, and Rick forgets where he is. Forgets that they're on the run, forgets that so many lives were just lost, forgets that everything can end in a single second if he isn't careful. "Me too."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please don't hate on this chapter too hard, guys. I promise there'll be more action (and more Rickyl) next chapter. I just needed to write out some of Rick's feelings, just to be clear. I don't want him to sound too wishy-washy. Hopefully this clears up a little of what's going on in his head. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it a little bit at least? :)


End file.
